Enriching API Documentation by Relevant API Methods Recommendation Based on Version History

Abstract

Application programming interfaces (APIs) enable developers to increase their productivity; however, developers have to expend much of their time to search API usages because API documentation often lacks some types of information such as co-use relationships between API methods or code examples. In this paper, we propose a technique to automatically generate enriched API documentation. Our technique identifies groups of relevant API methods by analyzing a software change history and inserts those into standard API documentation. Using our document, developers can easily find relevant API methods interactively according to their various development purposes.