Note: The Model, View, Controller pattern, or “MVC”, actually comes in many flavors.

Model—The application.
View—What the consumer (user) sees. Often HTML, JSON, or XML.
Controller—A thin layer connecting the View and the Model.

And that’s it! There’s nothing fancy, but it often requires explanation. The controller, as shown above, should be as thin as possible. The view should only have display logic and the model is ... what, exactly?

Model
The application.
View
What the consumer (user) sees. Often HTML, JSON, or XML.
Controller
A thin layer connecting the View and the Model.

Almost every MVC tutorial that I see confuses the data model with the Model.