Static Methods in Interfaces

[benjeeeboy]

So basically I have a number of classes that i need to convert to and from bytes for networking purposes. So i created the interface:

public interface Raw
{
	public byte [] getBytes(); 
	public static Object fromBytes (byte [] data,int startPos) throws InvalidDataException;
}

The problem is that when i build it, i get told that static functions are illegal in interfaces.

Is there any way around this so that I can instanciate objects of the type that implements it through a common interface?

[azcodemonkey]

Why does it need to be static?

[kjordan2001]

Unfortunately that's not possible.

[Winston]

Yeah why exactly does it need to be static? It's an interface, it can't do anything besides being inherited, or having constants inside the interface which makes this interface act as an Enumeration.

[Sn1p3t]

You can't have static members in interfaces :(

From looking at the code you posted, it doesn't look like it needs to be static, but I could be wrong :D

[_kane81]

yes why does it need to be static please do tell?

[Winston]

  liykh001 said:

yes why does it need to be static please do tell?

584959134[/snapback]

Well i think it's pretty logical at one stage i guess, an interfaces methods provides no implementation, and when you invoke a static method it's generally through ClassName.MethodName, but however i guess in some cases when developers want to create interfaces so that it forces the users of the interface to implement the method as being static would become an issue.