Non static method cannot be referenced from a static context: Integer Date.dayOfYear()

Question

I am new to the salesforce and trying to do the following

System.debug('Date :'+ Date.today());
System.debug('Date + 1 :'+Date.today().addDays(2));
System.debug('Add Months : '+Date.today().addMonths(3));
System.debug('Add Years : '+Date.today().addYears(5));

System.debug('Day Of year : '+Date.dayOfYear()+'');

Please refer: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43375201/non-static-method-cannot-be-referenced-from-a-static-context-integer-date-dayof#

Answer 1

You are trying to call an instance method as if it were static. That won't work. Here's an analogous example for you:

public class MyClass
{
    public void instanceMethod()
    {
        // do stuff
    }
    public static void staticMethod()
    {
        // do stuff
    }
}

You can't call MyClass.instanceMethod() nor new MyClass().staticMethod(). You're trying to do the former.

Answer 2

This will work:'

System.debug('Day Of year : '+Date.today().dayOfYear());

Result Gives: 103, as today's date is 13th-Apr-2017.

Answer 3

Technical Explanation

• Static methods can be used directly with a class. ex-> Date.today()

• Non-static methods can't be used directly. ex -> Date.year() - error or Date.dayOfYear() - error .So the solution for this problem is to create an instance of the class which can be done as - Class className = new Class(); className.nonstaticMethod();

• However, in this scenario, you can't create an instance for Date because for some classes you just can't create an instance in general. But they have already provided some methods where you can create an instance of the Date class. example - date.newInstance(year, month, day)

• So in this case you can use something like --> --> Date.newInstance(year, month, day).dayOfYear(); // to use the date of your choice or, --> Date.today().dayOfYear(); // to use today's date

As the above examples, you can use any non-static methods with the date instance.

General explanation - So in this particular case, when you use date.year() or date.dayOfyear(), the system doesn't actually know what to return because you aren't giving it a proper date value. So basically, If you don't give it a date value, It doesn't make sense to ask about the year or about the day of the year, right? So this is kind of general way I came up with to understand this problem, If it makes sense to you. When you are using date.today(), so it doesn't need a particular date value. Today will always return the value of that particular day.