Should controllers in an ASP.NET MVC web app call repositories, services, or both?

Question

The controllers in my ASP.NET MVC web app are starting to get a bit bloated with business logic. The examples on the web all show simple controller actions that simply pull dat

Answer 1

If you are going to have a business layer, then I think that it is best to have only the business layer talk to the data layer. I can understand why in a simple use case, you'd have the presentation layer (the controller) talk to the data layer directly, but once you identify a need for an isolated business layer, then mixing usage of the two in higher levels gets to be dangerous.

For example, what if controller A calls a method in the business layer to fetch a List of Object A (and this method applies the business rules - maybe some filtering or sorting), but then Controller B comes along, needs the same piece of data, but forgets about the business layer and calls the data layer directly ?