What are MVP and MVC and what is the difference?

• MVP = Model-View-Presenter

• MVC = Model-View-Controller

  1. Both presentation patterns. They separate the dependencies between a Model (think Domain objects), your screen/web page (the View), and how your UI is supposed to behave (Presenter/Controller)
  2. They are fairly similar in concept, folks initialize the Presenter/Controller differently depending on taste.
  3. A great article on the differences is here. Most notable is that MVC pattern has the Model updating the View.

Both of these frameworks aim to seperate concerns - for instance, interaction with a data source (model), application logic (or turning this data into useful information) (Controller/Presenter) and display code (View). In some cases the model can also be used to turn a data source into a higher level abstraction as well. A good example of this is the MVC Storefront project.

There is a discussion here regarding the differences between MVC vs MVP.

The distinction made is that in an MVC application traditionally has the view and the controller interact with the model, but not with each other.

MVP designs have the Presenter access the model and interact with the view.

Having said that, ASP.NET MVC is by these definitions an MVP framework because the Controller accesses the Model to populate the View which is meant to have no logic (just displays the variables provided by the Controller).

To perhaps get an idea of the ASP.NET MVC distinction from MVP, check out this MIX presentation by Scott Hanselman.