Advantages and disadvantages to RACCommand under MVVM

gistfile1.md

MVVM example

For a command that initiates a network request when:

• The network connection is up (precondition)
• The network request is not already in progress (enforced serialization)

The lifecycle proceeds as follows:

1. The view model exposes the command and describes its behavior
2. The view binds the command to a control
   • The control will automatically be enabled when the command's preconditions (above) pass
3. When the control is clicked, the command is executed
4. When results arrive from the network, the view model handles them
5. The view model eventually fires some property or notification to update the view

Setup:

VM (creates command) ---> (passed to) View ---> (passed to) Control

Execution:

Control ---> Command ---> VM ---> View

Benefits

• The view doesn't need to know when the command is valid, since the control is automatically enabled/disabled via its rac_command extension
• The command can be bound to multiple input sources in exactly the same way
• The command can be directly executed while preserving all of its guarantees
• The view doesn't need to know anything about the behavior that will occur, since it does not directly receive the results of the command
• The view can present errors (via RACCommand.errors) without caring why or how they occurred
• Signals are automatically delivered to the main thread, which helps avoid bugs in UI code

Drawbacks

• Receiving results is confusing, because signals of signals (like executionSignals) are confusing
• Views have access to more information about the command than they need, like executionSignals, allowsConcurrentExecution, etc.
• The relationship between the signalBlock and execution is unclear
• The view model should respond to the view out-of-band (this is simpler, but occasionally makes things harder as well)

@jspahrsummers I don't have anything to add, but I'm 👍 on those pros and cons.

@lawrencelomax: Not entirely sure what you're talking about, could you post a code sample somewhere?