MVC on the command line

Question

I am looking into the MVC from a Command line point of view (not web and no framework).. nice and simple. the only thing that confuses me is the View part of this? (well it may

Answer 1

define an abstract yet simple MVC program as:

interface Model {
    public void setName(String name);
}

interface View {
    public String prompt(String prompt);
}

class Controller {

    private final Model model;
    private final View view;

    public Controller(Model model, View view) {
        this.model = model;
        this.view = view;
    }

    public void run() {
        String name;

        while ((name = view.prompt("\nmvc demo> ")) != null) {
            model.setName(name);
        }
    }
}

then use the Observer pattern (built-in since JDK 1.0, see here) in order to fill the concrete classes:

class Person extends Observable implements Model {

    private String name;

    public Person() {
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String newName) {
        this.name = newName;
        setChanged();
        notifyObservers(newName);
    }
}

class TUI implements Observer, View { // textual UI

    private final BufferedReader br;

    public TUI(Reader reader) {
        this.br = new BufferedReader(reader);
    }

    public void update(Observable o, Object arg) {
        System.out.println("\n => person updated to " + arg);
    }

    public String prompt(String prompt) {
        try {
            System.out.print(prompt);
            return br.readLine();
        } catch (IOException ex) {
            throw new RuntimeException(ex);
        }
    }
}

The main class, that is only responsible to build and connect together the components:

TUI view = new TUI(new StringReader("David\nDamian\nBob\n"));
Person model = new Person();
model.addObserver(view);
Controller controller = new Controller(model, view);
controller.run();

the ouput of this program is:

mvc demo> 
 => person updated to David

mvc demo> 
 => person updated to Damian

...