Recently, I used the Pure MVC framework for the first time on a project and it opened my mind to the right ways, wrong ways, and new ways to structure a project in Flash. Before I get into the pros and cons, I want want to first warn any of you that are new to using frameworks in general that there is some studying involved in order to fully wrap your mind around how this thing works. But it’s totally worth it.

Before you jump in, it’ll help if you are familiar with OOP programming basics and have an understanding of what the MVC design pattern is. When I started, I was already quite familiar with MVC pattern and decided that having a framework that laid out some rules for my programming may help in keeping the project consistent. In order for me to completely grasp this new way of thinking, I first took a look at the conceptual diagram and quickly decided that it made absolutely no sense to me. Then I read through the Framework Overview and the Best Practices PDFs multiple times and it started to finally click. The guys who put together this framework did a really good job of providing lots of examples and documentation to help you though this difficult time, so search through and give it a good honest go around before throwing you hands in the air.

After using it for a few months, here’s a summary of the advantages and disadvantages.

Pros

• Provides structure and “rules” for programming your project
• Used among multiples languages, so your one leg up if you want to use it in C#, Java, or PHP
• Gives you a better understanding of OOP concepts in general and why they’re so useful
• Makes it easy to separate your project into multiples pieces which may help if there are multiple people working on a project
• Makes it easy to remove or turn off features

Cons

• Forces you make a lot of classes
• Adds to the compile time, so it’s probably not a good idea to use with small projects
• When adding new functionality, it may take a little more time to implement if it’s going through the entire framework, though it’s more likely that it will be less buggy

Summary

Pure MVC was great to learn and helped me more concretely understand some OOP concepts that I was a little spotty on. I’m sure that I will use it again, but only for larger projects where I need a  shell that ties everything together and has a lot of different “modes”. For a smaller project, I’m going to try out Robotlegs, which seems to have some of the same core concepts in a tighter package. Either way, I know that all of my future projects will have some solid structure and some of my own rules for developing it.

Check back soon to see how this Pure MVC-based project turned out.

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