PureMVC is a lightweight MVC framework originally written for Actionscript 3, but which has subsequently been ported to a host of other platforms. I’m a PureMVC fan boy. There is no denying it. Here are few reasons why:

Simplicity
There are a few MVC frameworks available for Actionscript 3. None of them are, well… as pure. PureMVC is simple by design. It doesn’t provide you with a lot of bells and whistles. What it does is provide a solid foundation upon which to add your own functionality in limitless ways. The framework itself is simple. ‘Make it as simple as possible, but no simpler,’ said Albert Einstein. This is one of the core goals of PureMVC.

Community
The PureMVC community is growing. The Architect’s Lounge has high signal to noise ratio. Cliff makes a super human effort to personally answer every question that is posted. Among the helpful community members is Chandima Cumaranatunge, the co-author of a book that anybody interested in OO Actionscript should own, Actionscript 3 Design Patterns.

Cliff has created the PureMVC Manifold Project, which provides a well crafted central location for official PureMVC releases, and a host of ports, demos, and utilities developed by the community. This wealth of information provides a high quality code base to use and learn from.

Reusability
As you can see by poking around the Manifold Project, there are a lot of utilities and modules already available. The basic structure of a PureMVC project naturally lends itself to the creation of common classes that can be reused across many projects. Major components don’t care who is sitting beside them. They happily wait for their notifications and respond without considering their neighbors. In some circles this would be considered rude, but in a PureMVC application this gives a wonderful, loosely couple application that can be refactored and recycled.

Portability
The port to Python is done!  PureMVC is on Flex, Flash, AIR, FlashLite, Python, .NET, Windows Mobile, Silverlight, J2ME, SE, EE, JavaFX, PHP and ColdFusion. This speaks to the simplicity of the framework. It is so fundamental, that most of the ports were just straight translation.

Cliff
Cliff is samurai. He is the benevolent, tireless dictator that any flowering project needs. He is actively engaged with the community. On a daily basis he is on the forums answering questions. The structuring of the ever-expanding pile of resources and information into something useful is daunting task. There it is with the Manifold Project. It is inspiring to see someone so passionate about what they do, and channeling that passion back at anyone interested in learning.

Thanks Cliff, your efforts are greatly appreciated.

The 5 reasons PureMVC kicks ass by Joel Hooks, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.