Static Interface Methods in ABAP

Former Member — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 10:29:15 GMT

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.

Re: Static Interface Methods in ABAP

Former Member — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 10:52:50 GMT

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

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Static Interface Methods in ABAP

Re: Static Interface Methods in ABAP