Brave New World

Now we've thrashed out a pretty good picture of how the HRIT system will look, I decided to make the MVD-GUI in its image. That is, to use the HRIT REST service, the HRIT API, and write a HRIT compatibility layer for all my modules to run in. The BIG advantage of this is that, provided a compatibility layer is available for a particular CMS, the same module will run unmodified in that CMS (Content Management System). The only catch is that I'd have to find somewhere to host the HRIT Java REST service (cloud, left). So here's my current design for the compatibility layer:

In the Model-View-Controller design the Model handles all interactions with the database. Give me this, here is that, etc. So an implementation of the HRIT API fits that design pretty well (the pink box). It wouldn't have to access any databases directly, because it would get all the data it needs from the REST Service. So it could be the same on all CMSes.

The Controller on the other hand (orange boxes) deals with all the user-clicks in the view and decides what to do with them. It interposes between the view and the model to decide when to call the model and what to return to the view. It's the 'business logic' of the application. An individual CMS can't and does not in practice mandate an MVC design, but it does define conventions for calling modules. So in Drupal and Joomla!, HRIT modules will be defined with a library of functions that will act as the master controller for the module. Whereas the module itself will have its own private controller that will call the master one. The private controller will include the master controller with a require statement and assume the existence of certain functions or static methods inside that controller, say HRITController::doSomething().

The View (green box) can do what it likes, so long as it only uses PHP functionality, and doesn't call any CMS-specific routines or rely on any CMS-specific data. If it needs something like that it will have to get it from the compatibility layer via its private controller.