Question

I have a class that must have some static methods. Inside these static methods I need to call the method getClass() to make the following call:

public static void startMusic() {
  URL songPath = getClass().getClassLoader().getResource("background.midi");
}

However Eclipse tells me:

Cannot make a static reference to the non-static method getClass() 
from the type Object

What is the appropriate way to fix this compile time error?

Answer 1

The Answer

Just use TheClassName.class instead of getClass().

Declaring Loggers

Since this gets so much attention for a specific usecase–to provide an easy way to insert log declarations–I thought I’d add my thoughts on that. Log frameworks often expect the log to be constrained to a certain context, say a fully-qualified class name. So they are not copy-pastable without modification. Suggestions for paste-safe log declarations are provided in other answers, but they have downsides such as inflating bytecode or adding runtime introspection. I don’t recommend these. Copy-paste is an editor concern, so an editor solution is most appropriate.

In IntelliJ, I recommend adding a Live Template:

• Use “log” as the abbreviation
• Use private static final org.slf4j.Logger logger = org.slf4j.LoggerFactory.getLogger($CLASS$.class); as the template text.
• Click Edit Variables and add CLASS using the expression className()
• Check the boxes to reformat and shorten FQ names.
• Change the context to Java: declaration.

Now if you type log<tab> it’ll automatically expand to

private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(ClassName.class);

And automatically reformat and optimize the imports for you.