Static Method With Class Name Also?

I'm looking at a piece of co开发者_StackOverflowde I don't fully understand. This is how it looks:

public static ClassName MethodName(int parameter){
    //Method does its thing
}

Is there a name for this type of code pattern? Also, what is it being used for?

It's simply a static method which returns an object of type ClassName. Do you mean that it is declared inside of the ClassName class? This is fine, it just means that the class in question has a static method which returns an instance of itself. This is commonly used in the Factory Pattern, for example. Rather than manually instantiate an instance of the class, a static method is called which returns an instance.

It is simply a static method that returns an object of type "ClassName". Looks like it could be a factory method(?)

Also, what is it being used for?

Can't really answer that seeing as there is no definition in your example. It's just a method signature with generic names.

In you example the method returns an instance of class ClassName.

This is really equivalent to any other method, equivalent to public static String MethodName(). It's fairly common to create a static method on a class, which returns an instance of the same class, i.e. a factory method.

It's just a class method. You don't have to instantiate anything to call it. It can only access other static methods and fields, because without an instance you can't call any non-static(non-class) variables.