Model view controller in iOS mobile applications development

Abstract

Due to the increased number of mobile applications and their popularity, many software developers have begun to focus on mobile platforms. While this focus has positive effects (e.g. a larger developer community, new open source projects, new tools), it also has a down side. With the migration of developers from different software development areas, where they have used other programming paradigms or architectural approaches, the topic of software architecture on mobile platforms become more trending and hype in the mobile development communities. Even though several new architectural solution were proposed for solving some of the issues which arise from using the classical architectural patterns popularised by the creators of the mobile platforms, we want to emphasise the principles of software architecture in mobile computing, why they have to be respected and how their adoption impacts the development process. Therefore, this paper focuses on showing that the Model View Controller (MVC) - one of the most common classical architectural patterns - can be used successfully for building mobile applications and the problems which might arise are by products of the wrong usage of the pattern rather than pattern issues. We show that by analysing the most common architectural misuses of the MVC pattern in both open-source and private projects and offers solutions to those problems.