MVC PHP: Data manipulation in View loop or Controller loop (ie. 1 loop or 2 loops)

I would do that nor in the view or the controller but on the model.

I explain :

• Your controller's job is to retrieve the expected user list, check ACL, etc...
• Your view's job is to present this data in an elegant form
• Your Model job's in to fetch/store data from Database and ensure integrity. Userstatus is a model too for me.

My configuration make this pretty easy, I use mustache (Php port) for view, which allow me to call methods from my models directly in view. I wrote my own ORM for my models, that way I have wrappers.

Such code would look like that for me :

// Controller
$template = new Template('pages/users.html');
$template->users = mUser::find(); // return array of mUsers instances
echo $template->render();

// View
{{#users}} <!-- For each user -->
  {{getName}} has status {{#getStatus}}{{getStatusName}}{{/getStatus}}<br />
  <!-- getStatus is a method from mUser model, that return a mUserStatus instance -->
{{/users}}

/* More explain on the view syntax
{{name}} = $user->getName() (return string)
{{getStatus}} = $user->getStatus() (return instance of mUserStatus);
{{statusName}} = $user->getStatus()->getStatusName();
*/

You may want to have request caching for each model instances in request level so that you never runs a request twice times if not needed.

That seems more natural to me than to delegate it to controller. I try to put business intelligence on controllers, there is no need for intelligence nor programmer intervention to retrieve a status name for each user.

I Hope it help.