1 hour ago, itsnotabug wrote
i think this is where i'm having some difficulty with mvc. i've gone through the samples but it seems like in order to do anything substantial (real-world), i'd end up having to go MVVM in practice. i'm sure i'm missing something but the attributes on the controller seem to control too much that could possibly be going on in the view like conditional string formatting, validation, localization. would partial views help in the case?
Consider adding ViewModels in the mix. The article below exactly addresses the issue when a Controller might best be split apart into View-centric ViewModels where all common code for them remains in the Controller. It is simply another object layer, the ViewModel is solely concerned with what the View displays. Remember the Principle of Seperation of Concerns, (fundamental, primary), should compel us to break code-dense Controllers into "single-purpose" classes; ViewModels can be split out from a heavy Controller class. These ViewModels, then, may turn around and ask the Controller to run important or shared code that is beyond the "just-format-this-data-for-display" code you want to put into ViewModels.
http://geekswithblogs.net/michelotti/archive/2009/10/25/asp.net-mvc-view-model-patterns.aspx
In my experience partial or composite Views are much more difficult to manage... Microsoft Patterns & Practices takes the lead with that, in my world view: http://compositewpf.codeplex.com/ You could model your own code from their mature code base.
