Live API Documentation

Source code examples;source code search;documentation;Computer Science

Subramanian, Siddharth

University of Waterloo

关键词: Source code examples;    source code search;    documentation;    Computer Science;   

Others  :  https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/bitstream/10012/8579/3/Subramanian_Siddharth.pdf

瑞士|英语

来源: UWSPACE Waterloo Institutional Repository

【 摘 要 】

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) provide powerful abstraction mechanisms that enable complex functionality to be used by client programs. However, this abstraction does not come for free: understanding how to use an API can be difficult. While API documentation can help, it is often insufficient on its own. Online sites like Stack Overflow and Github Gists have grown to fill the gap between traditional API documentation and more example-based resources. Unfortunately, these two important classes of documentation are independent.This thesis describes an iterative, deductive method of linking source code examplesto API documentation. We also present an implementation of this method, called Baker, that is highly precise (0.97) and supports both Java and JavaScript. Baker can be used toenhance traditional API documentation with up-to-date source code examples; it can alsobe used to incorporate links to the API documentation into the code snippets that use theAPI.