Controller

Overview

The controller is a Java program that is used to glue UI (view) and Data (model) together.

A simple UI does not require any controllers. For example, the data of a Listbox could be abstracted by implementing ListModel as described in the Model section.

For typical database access, the glue logic (i.e., controller) can be handled by a generic feature called Data Binding. In other words, the create, read, update and delete operations (CRUD) can be handled automatically by a generic Data Binding mechanism, and you don't need to write the glue logic at all as described in the Data Binding section.

If none of the above fulfills your requirement, you could implement a custom controller (which is called a composer in ZK terminology). In the following sections we will discuss how to implement a custom controller in details.