Facebook Trumps

The model view controller pattern is the classic pattern adopted for GUI and client applications (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-view-controller). MVC however, is quite a broad pattern, and so I went in search of further detailed recommendations and architectural guidance. Luckily, Java seems to be a language which is adopted by people with an interest in software engineering principles, therefore a great many resources are available.

The client component needs to obtain a stack of trumps via RPC, compute the various outcomes in the game, communicate rich perspective on the game state to the user and accept interactions from the user. The most appropriate framework I could find is the HMVC (Hierarchical MVC) which is treated at length here: http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-07-2000/jw-0721-hmvc.html.

Following MVC principles the view (GWT Widgets) are delineated from the controller (flow logic) and the model (rpc, game logic). HMVC however fills in some of the gaps with respect to how these elements are composed and structured, and how these elements can communicate amongst one another. The heirarchical aspect allows a root controller encapsulating global concerns (such as the game and the trump stack) to control various children, such as turn screens, scoreboards or outcome views.

A concrete and usable example of HMVC is availible here, tp://www.thecentric.com/wiki/index.php/HMVC_Tutorial, which can easily be adapted to work with GWT.

Labels: approach, facebook api, gwt, java