Should I convert my timestamp in my controller or view (CakePHP)? - model-view-controller

Question

I'm working at understanding best practices for MVC (using CakePHP) and am trying to understand if a certain task should be happening in the controller or the view.
Here's the scenario:
I have a table of users. Each user has many events associated with them.
In my controller I'm loading content about a user into an array like so:
$this->set('user', $this->User->read());
That results in a user array I can loop through on my view page:
Array
(
[User] => Array
(
[id] => 1
[name] => Jane Doe
[created] => 2011-03-29 15:50:25
[modified] => 1301428225
)
[Event] => Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[id] => 4
[user_id] => 1
[title] => Birthday
[created] => 2011-04-07 17:28:53
[modified] => 2011-04-07 17:28:53
[occured] => 1301889600
)
[1] => Array
(
[id] => 3
[user_id] => 1
[title] => Anniversary
[created] => 2011-04-07 17:21:27
[modified] => 2011-04-07 17:21:27
[occured] => 1301976000
)
[2] => Array
(
[id] => 2
[user_id] => 1
[title] => Graduation
[created] => 2011-04-07 17:20:41
[modified] => 2011-04-07 17:20:41
[occured] => 1301889600
)
)
Now, occured is a timestamp which I need to convert to a friendly date.
Should I:
A) Do this in the controller? If so, what's the best syntax to dig into the array and do that?
B) Do it in the view when it's called?
<?=date("d/m/Y,$thisEvent['occured']);?>
The latter seems cleaner with less code, but I don't know if it's logic I can / should be applying from the controller.

Answer 1

If you are going to loop through an array in the view anyway in order to display the events, I would just put the conversion in the view to save having to loop in the controller as well.
To me, the date formatting is a presentation thing - not a business logic thing.
Amy

Answer 2

The rule of thumb is this: Fat Model to Skinny View. The View should not handle logic. Period. The view should not handle alteration of data, it should only handle displaying it. The Model is where data manipulation should take place. But sometimes as coders we want to take the most easy way of doing things. Which isn't necessarily wrong, but isn't always the best way of doing thing.
My advice is one of the following (order of preference):
1- Alter the date format on the database so it comes out in the format you are looking for. Then there is no extra logic required for the formatting of the date.
2- Write the query as a join. (Which is what you should be doing in this case since recursive is on). Write the join so that the data comes back formatted as you expect. The problem is you are taking the shortcut by using $this->User-Read() which is causing you to have to write additional logic outside of the model to handle the formatting for the dates. The Model->read() has it's uses, this is not one of them.
3- If you are bent on using the Model->read() shortcut, you can build a date helper that you can reference from the view for any given date. For example, when you display the field in the view, you would call:
<?php echo $this->Date->format($thisEvent['occured']); ?>
Then the helper is where you would contain the code as follows:
function format($date) {
return date('d/m/Y', strtotime($date));
}
This way, if you ever decide you want to change the look of the dates, you only have to change the helper (1 location) instead of all of the views (multiple locations).

Answer 3

I would suggest that:
the Models return DateTime objects or similar. This way, it can be easy in the Controllers or the Views to make calculations/formatting on dates when necessary (good maintainability).
the Views, as said in another answer, should be kept as simple as possible (readability). With Smarty + working with specific DateTime objects, I can simply write {$someItem.someDate} in Views and the dates are formatted automatically (according to current user's language), by using a __toString() method of my specific DateTime class.