Question

I’ve seen static methods written (but I’ve never run the code) which uses instance data from another class (instance based).

Usually, instance data work with instance methods and likewise for static fields/methods. What is the implication of working on static data in an instance method? I’m assuming it is frowned upon but I can’t find any details on what will happen under the hood. Also, what about instance methods working with static data?

Thanks

Answer 1

When working with static data in an instance method, the only implication I can think of is synchronization in a multithreaded application. I can’t think of any adverse implications when working with instance data from a static method. However, just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done.

Here is a concrete example you provided.

Class A is instance based and has an instance field called ProductPrice of double. Class B is static and has a static method called PlayAroundWithPrice(double price), and the coder passes in the ProductPrice field.

Obviously, there is nothing technically illegal with this example, but it goes against the grain for me. First of all, the ProductPrice field of Class A is obviously public since Class B can operate on it. For the purposes of encapsulation, I personally always make fields private and use a public property to access them. Second, because ProductPrice is a public field instead of a public property, there’s no way for Class A to prevent ProductPrice from being set to invalid values (negative values, for example). Third (as stated above), if this example occurs in a multithreaded program, there could be synchronization issues. Fourth, I guess this is the real rub, why have a static method on Class B to operate on the field of Class A? Why not put the static method on Class A?

I don’t know that I’d go as far as making this a hard-and-fast rule (perhaps simply a rule-of-thumb), but I would restrict using static methods for when you do not want to pay for the cost of constructing an object just to use the method.

For example, in the project I work on, I have an IPHeader class that will fully construct an IPHeader instance from a byte buffer. However, in most cases, I only need a couple of values from the IPHeader. So to avoid the costs associated with creating and garbage-collecting an IPHeader instance, I added a couple of static methods that will extract the values from the byte buffer directly.

I hope I’ve understood your question correctly.