An API Learning Service for Inexperienced Developers Based on API Knowledge Graph

Abstract

Software development kits (SDKs) including application programming interfaces (APIs) are always required by developers who need to learn how to use the APIs. However, inexperienced developers may face two problems when learning APIs. Firstly, API-related learning resources cannot be easily obtained. Secondly, inexperienced developers often cannot find proper learning entries and paths to learn APIs, either. To solve these problems, we design an API learning service for inexperienced developers. Firstly, we propose an API link method to find learning resources about APIs in Stack Overflow (SO). Secondly, we construct an API knowledge graph which contains APIs and API-related Q&A threads from SO. Thirdly, by mining how APIs are discussed together in SO, we propose a learning entry recommendation method. At last, we propose an API learning service using the methods above to help inexperienced developers learn APIs. We conduct experiments and results demonstrate the feasibility of our methods and service.