Alternate names: static-method

The problem

Consider a method that doesn’t override and is not overrideable. Note first that such a method should declare only the parameters it actually needs; this is widely accepted as a good general practice.

But if this is an instance method that never refers to this (either explicitly or implicitly), the resulting situation is actually quite similar to that of the unused parameter. This method is static “in spirit”, yet calling it requires an extra “parameter”, so to speak – a receiver.

Adding an explicit static keyword to such a method is conceptually similar to removing that unused parameter. This has several desirable effects:

• An actual static method can call your method if it wants to, without having to figure out an instance to call it on.
• It makes it clear (and, indeed, guarantees) that the method’s behavior relies only on its parameters and not on instance state.

Another effect of adding static is that it renders instance fields and methods inaccessible within the body of the method, so (for example) an auto-completion feature won’t suggest them.

A common reason to omit static is when you believe the method may need to access instance state in the future. However, it usually works fine to just remove static if and when it becomes necessary. You’d have to revisit any calls that accrued in static contexts, but that’s probably no worse than those callers being out of luck in the first place.

Suppression

Suppress false positives by adding the suppression annotation @SuppressWarnings("MethodCanBeStatic") to the enclosing element.