MVC help

[ndmccormack]

Hi there,

I've been learning AS3 for a month or so now - reading Advanced AS3 by Collin Moock and AS3 with Design Patterns, doing some small projects - and, more or less, it all sorta makes sense.

I'm now going to embark on creating a website for a friend/client on the cheap and I just want to make sure I'm using the correct method for outlining the site.

The site is a standard folio site - Homepage, News, Work, About, Contact. I'll go into a little detail as how the site animates/is constructed.

- The pages are 'stacked' on top of each other, and scroll vertically to the required section when the user interacts with the nav.

- The nav has some fancy interactive wires on it that correspond to each nav option, these animate between sections.

- the work section scrolls horizontally through all the projects - similar to how spin.co.uk works.

- the site is updated via xml.

- I'd like to create a proxy image loader so that the work images load in the bg after the main swf/site has loaded.


Now, I presume that I create a main controller that then loads in the following

Main Controller
- DataLoader ( loads XML, stores data)
- - ImageProxy ( sequentially loads all work images )
- Main View ( stacks other views vertically )
- - progressBarController ( get's loading proogress of site, XML, bg image )
- - - progressBarView ( shows loading progress )
- - Navigation controller
- - - Nav Vie
- - - - Fancy Wires
- - Homepage Controller
- - - Homepage View
- - News Controller
- - - News View
- - Work Controller
- - - Work Model/Data ( pulls images from image proxy )
- - - Work View
- - About Us Controller
- - - About Us View
- - Contact Controller
- - - Contact View


I'm confused as to whether I should have more Models/Data classes, is one enough? once the XML has loaded should I parse the data out into other Data classes - one for each section? I realised that it would be best to have a Work Model class as it is relatively complex.

Am I missing the point of MVC, can I simplify it in other ways?

Any help is much appreciated

Cheers
Niall

[Flash Gordon]

My basic set up is this...and it isn't MVC. I basically follow 1 rule: 1 purpose for 1 class.

navigation - class
transitions - class
each "scene" - class
sound fx - class

now with in that I may or may not use MVC, but that's my basic structure for the site. The Document Class merely instantiates all the other classes.

[yell0wdart]

I tend to agree w/ Mr Gordon above. Not MVC specific, but definitely very good practice. You should be able to describe what any of your given classes do in a short sentence. If you find yourself drawing out the description with lots of and's, etc, then it might be time to rethink your design.

With that said, how are you setting this up? What does your class hierarchy look like? I can see the different functions in your list there, but it's hard to make out exactly where you're having problems...

/edit

I'd also argue, that if you're only using one datasource (seems to be XML in your case), then only one model may be necessary. You're just using a singular class to parse through XML text and attributes.