Joomla! Documentation™

The controller is responsible for responding to user actions. In the case of a web application, a user action is generally a page request. The controller will determine what request is being made by the user and respond appropriately by triggering the model to manipulate the data appropriately and passing the model into the view. The controller does not display the data in the model, it only triggers methods in the model which modify the data, and then pass the model into the view which displays the data.