Mining for Framework Instantiation Pattern Interplays

Abstract

Software frameworks define generic application blueprints which can be instantiated into an application through application-specific instantiation actions such as overriding a method or providing an object that implements an interface. In case the framework's documentation falls short, developers may use other instantiations of the same framework as a guide to the required instantiation actions. In this paper, we propose an automated approach to mining framework instantiation patterns from existing open-source instantiations. The approach leverages a graph-based representation to capture the common ways of implementing instantiation actions as well as their interplays, so called instantiation interplays. As a case study, we mined for patterns in a set of 2,028 Java projects that instantiate four of the most popular Java frameworks. We also classify the extracted interplays according to the different contexts in which they occur. We found that our approach discovers relevant practices and interplays that are not covered by previous approaches. Our results will allow developers to have a better understanding of the frameworks they instantiate.