Query to all contents of tabel in related model in laravel - laravel

Question

Assume we have a model name "Article" in Laravel and want to make query for retrieving latest articles, so one way is to define a method in the "Article" model like this:
public function newArticle()
{
return static::where('created_at', '>', Carbon::subMonths(1));
}
The question is, why we should use
static::
in the above code?
Is it possible to use
$this or self::
instead of
"static::" ?
Thanks in advance,

Answer 1

You could but there is not interest because:
where method does not exist statically on Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model class, so it calls __callStatic magic method which delegates the call to an instance
/**
* Handle dynamic static method calls into the method.
*
* #param string $method
* #param array $parameters
* #return mixed
*/
public static function __callStatic($method, $parameters)
{
return (new static)->$method(...$parameters);
}
It calls where method on instance but it does not exist either, so it calls __call magic method which delegates it an Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder instance.
/**
* Handle dynamic method calls into the model.
*
* #param string $method
* #param array $parameters
* #return mixed
*/
public function __call($method, $parameters)
{
if (in_array($method, ['increment', 'decrement'])) {
return $this->$method(...$parameters);
}
return $this->forwardCallTo($this->newQuery(), $method, $parameters);
}
/**
* Get a new query builder for the model's table.
*
* #return \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder
*/
public function newQuery()
{
return $this->registerGlobalScopes($this->newQueryWithoutScopes());
}