Question

I know this question has been asked over and over, but I can’t seem to find good enough answers. So to make it clear what I’m trying to know, I’ll split this in two questions:

1. Why can’t interfaces have static method signatures? I’ll try to preempt the non-answers asking why in the world I would want to do this with the following: I would want to be able to statically invoke GetDbConnectionType() on SqliteCodeGenerator and MssqlCodeGenerator:

   interface ICodeGenerator
   {
       // this is the method I would like to be static:
       string GetDbConnectionType();
   }
   
   abstract class CodeGeneratorBase : ICodeGenerator
   {
       public abstract string GetDbConnectionType();
   
       public void GenerateSomeCode(StringBuilder s)
       {
           s.AppendLine("var foo = new " + GetDbConnectionType() + "();");
       }
   }
   
   class SqliteCodeGenerator : CodeGeneratorBase
   {
       public override string GetDbConnectionType()
       {
           return "SQLiteConnection";
       }
   }
   
   class MssqlCodeGenerator : CodeGeneratorBase
   {
       public override string GetDbConnectionType()
       {
           return "SqlConnection";
       }
   }
   

2. On the other hand, and this is the matter of this second question, if you know of a good alternative to reach the aforementioned goal, then by all means…

Answer 1

Suppose you could specify in an interface that a type had to have a particular static method… how would you call it? Polymorphism works through instances – whereas static members explicitly don’t use instances.

Now, having said that, there’s one situation in which I can see static interface members working: generic types. For example:

// This isn't valid code...
public void Foo<T>() where T : ICodeGenerator
{
    string type = T.GetDbConnectionType();
}

That would call the static member on the concrete type T.

I’ve blogged more about this, but I suspect the benefit doesn’t justify the complexity.

In terms of alternatives – usually you’d have another interface, and have separate types to implement that interface. That works well in some contexts, but not in others.