Call subclass static method from inside superclass static method

Question

I have a large set of small, related classes linked together by an interface class. All classes implement a static method, which retrieves and processes data specific to the cla

Answer 1

Below's my hacky proposal. The idea is that you store the current calling class in a "static variable" of SuperClass, then query this field and use it in feval to call the correct subclass' method. Several notes:

• It could only work as long as you're not doing some computations in parallel (i.e. calling SubClass#.supersStaticMethod from more than one thread at a time under a shared memory architecture - in which case the calling class field will be overwritten erratically).
• SuperClass's supersStaticMethod cannot be Sealed, though the subclasses' versions can.
• The "static variable" is cleared after SubClass.supersStaticMethod to ensure that this method is only ever called from a subclass.
• I've added matlab.mixin.Heterogeneous as superclass of SuperClass for the purpose of demonstration.

---

classdef SuperClass < handle & matlab.mixin.Heterogeneous

  properties (Abstract = true, Access = private, Constant = true)
    subclass@meta.class scalar;
  end

  methods (Static, Abstract)
    [arg1, arg2] = subsStaticMethod;
  end

  methods (Sealed, Static)
    function out = currentClass(input) % < the closest thing in MATLAB to a static variable
      persistent currentClass;
      if nargout == 0 && nargin == 1 % "setter" mode
        currentClass = input;
        out = [];
      else % "getter" mode
        out = currentClass;
      end      
    end
  end

  methods (Static)

    function [other_arg1, other_arg2] = supersStaticMethod

      % Who am I?
      whosCalling = SuperClass.currentClass();
      if isempty(whosCalling) || ~isa(whosCalling,'meta.class')
        [other_arg1,other_arg2] = deal(NaN);
        return
      else
        whosCalling = whosCalling.Name;
      end

      fprintf(1,'\nCalled from: %s\n', whosCalling);
      % Get data here
      [arg1, arg2] = feval([whosCalling '.subsStaticMethod']);

      % transform data here
      other_arg1 = arg1+arg2; other_arg2=[arg1(:);arg2(:)];
      fprintf(1,'other_arg1: %s, other_arg2: %s\n',...
                num2str(other_arg1), mat2str(other_arg2));

      % Clear the current class
      SuperClass.currentClass([]);
    end
  end

end

classdef SubClass1 < SuperClass

  properties (Constant)
    subclass@meta.class scalar = ?SubClass1;
  end

  methods (Static)    
    function [other_arg1, other_arg2] = supersStaticMethod
      SubClass1.currentClass(SubClass1.subclass);
      [other_arg1, other_arg2] = supersStaticMethod@SuperClass;
    end

    function [arg1, arg2] = subsStaticMethod
      arg1 = -1; arg2 = -2;
    end            

  end % static methods 
end % classdef

classdef SubClass2 < SuperClass

  properties (Constant)
    subclass@meta.class scalar = ?SubClass2;
  end

  methods (Static)    
    function [other_arg1, other_arg2] = supersStaticMethod
      SubClass1.currentClass(SubClass2.subclass);
      [other_arg1, other_arg2] = supersStaticMethod@SuperClass;
    end

    function [arg1, arg2] = subsStaticMethod
      arg1 = 1; arg2 = 2;
    end            

  end % static methods 
end % classdef

Then you can test it like this:

function q31269260

arr = [SubClass1, SubClass2];
for ind1 = 1:numel(arr)
  arr(ind1).supersStaticMethod;
end
%  arr.supersStaticMethod would not work because elements are treated as "instances" of
%  SuperClass, whose supersStaticMethod should not be called directly.

The output is:

Called from: SubClass1
other_arg1: -3, other_arg2: [-1;-2]

Called from: SubClass2
other_arg1: 3, other_arg2: [1;2]