Panache: call entity static method inside instance entity method

[luca-bassoricci]

Few days ago I was reviewed some code and stumble in this piece of code:

public class Customer extends PanacheEntityBase {
  public String field1;
  public String field2;
  
  public Customer getCustomer() {
    return Customer.find(/*query using field1 and field2 as parameters*/).firstResult();
  }
  public Customer getAnotherCustomer() {
      return getCustomerSomeState(field1);
  }
  public static Customer getCustomerSomeState(String field1) {
    return Customer.find("where field1 = ?", field1).singleResult();
  }
}

Is this a good practice? I'm not expert at all in active-record pattern and this approach looks so weird to me, but before say others ppl stop using this kind of code I want to be sure about that.
Any advice?

Regards
Luca

[quarkus-bot[bot]]

/cc @FroMage (panache), @loicmathieu (panache)

[FroMage]

It's weird that getCustomer() and getAnotherCustomer() are not static because they're query methods.

[luca-bassoricci]

That's what sounds strange to me: they are not static because the use the internal state of a Customer as query parameters.
Trasposed to a classic repository pattern is like call a CustomerRepository method inside an entity instance and I have never seen do that (I'm just talking about my experience).
I suppose they perform static method calls inside class methods instead to enrich (hibernate) model and/or write some external component; code wrote in that manner works without problem, so nobody complains about it.
Is there any downside about this approach or is a better idea reject it?

[FroMage]

Oh, I see. So they're definitely instance methods then, that's fine.

Note that you can rewrite:

public Customer getCustomer() {
  return Customer.find(/*query using field1 and field2 as parameters*/).firstResult();
}

to:

public static Customer getCustomer(Customer other) {
  return find(/*query using other.field1 and other.field2 as parameters*/).firstResult();
}

If you find it better, but that's the same thing, really.