If you are using a JS framework like ExtJS, it is unlikely you’ll ever have a true “View” rendered by a controller because the framework is used to build the UI components.

On the other hand, you might have situations where you actually want a View (or Partial View) rendered directly into the DOM.

In most of my ExtJS and Sencha Touch applications, I only use the “Index” view to launch my JS code (for example, creating an ExtJS Viewport to encompass the UI), also possibly injecting preliminary data via ASP.NET (or PHP, or whatever).

Even though we may be using an MVC approach to our backend, our AJAX applications won’t rely on traditional MVC Views.

ExtJS 4.0 actually takes this idea to the next level. If you haven’t done so already, I suggest reading the MVC guide in the ExtJS 4.0 documentation.

For example, you might have a desktop UI and a mobile UI… others are possible as well.

Lastly, the “_app” is the encompassing UI, which interacts with any number of your controllers. Does that answer your question?

That’s a good question, and I don’t really have a definitive answer for you.

My understanding of “Views” in MVC is that they’re bound to the “Controllers”. Thus if you had a “Home” controller, you might have an “Index” view at /Home/Index.

Because our JavaScript code isn’t bound to the controllers I (personally) wouldn’t put the JS inside the “Views” folder. Views also typically contain server-side code (in your case, PHP) so separating server-side and client-side functionality makes sense to me.

On the other hand, Views do contain presentation functionality – so you could put your JS code in a Views/Shared folder.

Another concern I would have relates to “Areas” in MVC (I use ASP.NET MVC, so I can’t speak specifically about DooPHP). Because we might have many “Areas” in our application, we may want all of our JS code globally accessible. In that case, it wouldn’t make sense to have our JavaScript code inside a “Views” folder because those views are specific to the containing area.

I suppose it’s all a matter of preference.

Thanks a ton ! This post was my start point for building my first Ext professional application. I still have a concern. I have used a MVC php framework – DooPhp and I was wondering if instead the _apps/js folder, the presentstion javascript shouldn’t be within the view folder ?

root
+ global
+ css
+ ext
+ js ( common js)
+ controller
+ model
+ view
+ user ( JSs for presenting User related information)
+ order ( JSs for presenting Order related information)
…

I appreciate your attention !

This is very useful post. It will help me a lot. Thanks