Static Interface Methods in ABAP

[Former Member]

Hello,

I'd like to know what sense it makes to define static methods in an interface.

My understanding is, that an interface can only be used with an instance of a class implementing that interface. So I always need to have an instance and thus, static methods are not needed.

But ABAP-OO (in contrast to Java, for example) allows that, so maybe there is some need for that?

Thanks for your help, best regards,

Timo Wolf.

[Former Member]

Hi,

As you know that static methods are not instance- specific. Hence when a class implements an interface, the methods defined as static do not require an instance-specific call. Rather they are called as CLASSNAME=>INTREFACE_NAME~STATIC_METHOD_NAME. You do not need an instance to access them.

The only purpose of declaring a method as STATIC in interface definition is to create an agreement that a particular method will not depend on an instance to work. When a class implements the interface, calls to this method will be as mentioned above.

<b>

As far as the static components of interfaces are concerned, you can only use the interface name to access constants:

Addressing a constant <const>: <intf>=><const>

For all other static components of an interface, you can only use object references or the class <class> that implements the interface:

Addressing a static attribute <attr>: <class>=><intf~attr>

Calling a static method <meth>: CALL METHOD <class>=><intf~meth>

</b>

Hope this helps.

Regards

Message was edited by: Shehryar Khan

Message was edited by: Shehryar Khan