MVC pattern in Android?

Question

Is it possible to implement the Model-View-Controller pattern in Java for Android? Or is it already implemented through Activities? Or is there a better way to implement the MVC pattern for Android?

Your question is very good. But the answer marked as solution is not correct in my opinion. It might misguide several people. — Saghar, Jan 16 '14 at 15:33
Check out my 2 posts starting here Android Architecture: MV? — Dori, Apr 3 at 17:32

Mario Kutlev · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-20 11:59:52Z

up vote150down voteaccepted

In Android you don't have MVC, but you have the following:

You define your user interface in various XML files by resolution, hardware, etc.
You define your resources in various XML files by locale, etc.
You extend clases like ListActivity, TabActivity and make use of the XML file by inflaters.
You can create as many classes as you wish for your business logic.
A lot of Utils have been already written for you - DatabaseUtils, Html.

edited Jul 20 '14 at 11:59

Mario Kutlev
1,19421531

answered May 27 '10 at 22:09

Pentium10
83.4k70284370

188

if you're trying to imply that a static xml file is the view and an activity is a presenter/controller then you're missing the part of MVC/MVP pattern actually decouples the view and presenter. You cannot instantiate an activity without talking to your layout/view. Really what you want to do is use composition and embed the activity/layout into a view class and the have all the application/presentation logic decoupled out into their respective classes. While what you describe is MVC... it's a very bad, strongly coupled MVC. Which is poor to work with. Especially if you wish to unit test. – JDPeckham Apr 14 '11 at 23:20

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Android is terrible at MVC. Android's API philosophy is template/inheritance over composition; which makes it bad for testing too. That being said, there are ways to get MVC out of android, but it is not intuitive. – Paul Nikonowicz Dec 13 '11 at 16:57

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I'm writing a Android Architecture series which teaches/demonstrates how to implement MVC (and other patterns) in Android. Check it out: therealjoshua.com/2011/11/android-architecture-part-1-intro – user123321 Dec 20 '11 at 3:02

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This is what Google itself says about MVC in Android: No results found for +mvc site:developer.android.com. – 18446744073709551615 Apr 20 '12 at 9:29

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For anyone who says that "Android is MVC" please try Backbone.js (yes, client side js) for a week, and then come back and say that "Android is MVC". You'll finally understand the question and why we keep asking :) – Mark Peterson Feb 13 '14 at 17:12

Google Android Developer Tutorial

Monday, July 20, 2015