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

It might seem annoying to see lot of this in business services:

public Customer GetCustomer(int id)
{
     return customerRepository.Get(id);
}

And it's natural to have a strong urge to bypass the service. But you are better off in the long run allowing your business services intermediate between controllers and repositories.

Now, for a very simple CRUD type application, you could have your controllers consume repositories directly instead of going through business services. You could still have something like an EmailerService, but IMO when it comes to fetching and doing things with entities, best not to mix and match business service and repository calls in your controllers.

As for having entities (business objects) call services or any infrastructure components, I would not do that. I prefer to keep entities POCO and free of dependencies.