MVC With XSLT

When Spring MVC (Model View Controller) was first released in 2003, it helped clarify the roles and bring a clearer separation between the model, the view and the controller to Java web development. Complicated HTML pages became easier to maintain and changes were straight forward to implement. However, web applications have changed significantly since then.

With the recent explosion of new JavaScript libraries the separation between MVC has once again become blurred. Many HTML pages today are loaded in stages (a la AJAX), one entity at a time. Traditional Spring MVC seems overly complicated for small single entity results.

Creating rich AJAX web applications can still follow the MVC design pattern, although it might require stepping out of the Java/JavaScript comfort zone.

Consider a typical asynchronous request:
1) User's activity triggers an HTTP request.
2) The server processes the request and may invoke changes to the model and/or return part of the model (an entity) to the client.
3) The script that sent the request, manipulates the response and displays it for the user.

In the above we can still see the MVC pattern: the model is the server's response, the view is the manipulation of the response for display, and the controller is the server. However, this differs from the original Spring MVC of 2003 - the view has moved to the client and the model is (in part) serialized in an HTTP message body.

Part of the confusion with AJAX development is around the role of the "view". It gets blurred between the serialization of an entity model and how JavaScript displays it. Inconsistencies in this area can cause many maintainability issues as the interaction between the client and server becomes confusing.

By viewing dynamic HTTP responses as serializations of entities from a data source (model), and leaving the "view" for the client, clarity and maintainability can be achieved. The only standard display technology that works equally well for large entities and entity fragments is XSLT/HTML. Today's modern browsers all support XSLT 1.0 transformations using JavaScirpt. By using XML for the model interchange and XSLT/HTML for the view display, JavaScript usages can be limited to what it does best: filling in missing functionality of the browser.

By limiting the role of JavaScript, its reusability is maximized. In the future the amount of JavaScript required by web applications should be significantly reduced. In addition, projects like webforms2 (at google code) promise to bring tomorrow's HTML5 and Web forms 2.0 to today's browsers.

XSLT brings more flexibility and reusability to the view layer (vs JSP-like technologies). By using client-side JavaScript/XSLT with other AJAX technologies modern web applications can achieve the richness of desktop applications, while still using best practises of the MVC design pattern.