Paper Info
Title
An Exploratory Study of API Usage Examples on the Web
Abstract
Usage examples are helpful for programmers learning to use APIs from third-party frameworks or libraries. There are lots of usage examples scattered in web pages on the Web, such as tutorials, blogs, and forums. A few researches have proposed approaches to leveraging these usage examples to improve programming. However, due to the lack of comprehensive understanding on the current situation of usage examples on the web, the work is still at the very beginning. Many concerns are reserved, for instance, how many usage examples can be found on the Web? how well do such examples support programmers on earth? what factors have impact on these examples' usability? In this paper, we conducted an exploratory study of usage examples on the web, including their distribution, characteristics like content style, correctness, and complexity, as well as their correlations. Through the study, we obtain some insight of how to facilitate utilization of usage examples on the web and what mechanisms could be provided. Possible research directions and problems are proposed at the end.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1109/APSEC.2012.122
APSEC
Keywords
Field
DocType
web page,application program interfaces,web search,programming,third-party framework,program learning,comprehensive understanding,usage example,exploratory study,current situation,tutorial,api usage example,possible research direction,blog,web sites,complexity,libraries,forum,content style,computer science education,api,software libraries,empirical study,api usage examples,correctness,usage examples,computer aided instruction
Web development,Web design,Web API,World Wide Web,Web mining,Web page,Computer science,Web analytics,Web modeling,Web service
Conference
Volume
ISSN
ISBN
1
1530-1362
978-1-4673-4930-7
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
3
0.39
18
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Lijie Wang1504.60
Yanzhen Zou212417.09
Lu Fang334355.27
Bing Xie462545.85
Fuqing Yang535925.76