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Article

Who asked what: integrating crowdsourced FAQs into API documentation

Authors:

Kang ZhangAuthors Info & Claims

ICSE Companion 2014: Companion Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering

Pages 456 - 459

https://doi.org/10.1145/2591062.2591128

Published: 31 May 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Documentation is important for learning Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). In addition to official documents, much crowdsourced API knowledge is available on the Web. Crowdsourced API documentation is fragmented, scattered around the Web, and disconnected from official documentation. Developers often rely on Web search to retrieve additional programming help. We propose to connect these two types of documentation by capturing developers' Web browsing behavior in the context of document reading and integrating crowdsourced frequently asked questions (FAQs) into API documents. Such an integration not only provides relevant API help more conveniently, but also opens a new approach to promoting knowledge collaboration and studying API users' information needs.

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Cited By

Wu DZhang HFeng YDong Z(2025)MITU: Locating relevant tutorial fragments of APIs with multi-source API knowledgeJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2024.112296222(112296)Online publication date: Apr-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2024.112296
Wang STian YHe D(2023)gDoc: Automatic Generation of Structured API DocumentationCompanion Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 202310.1145/3543873.3587310(53-56)Online publication date: 30-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3543873.3587310
Wu DFeng YZhang HXu B(2023)Automatic recognizing relevant fragments of APIs using API referencesAutomated Software Engineering10.1007/s10515-023-00401-031:1Online publication date: 19-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10515-023-00401-0
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Index Terms

Who asked what: integrating crowdsourced FAQs into API documentation

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ICSE Companion 2014: Companion Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering

May 2014

741 pages

ISBN:9781450327688

DOI:10.1145/2591062

General Chair:
Pankaj Jalote
IIIT-Delhi, India
,
Program Chairs:
Lionel Briand
University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
,
André van der Hoek
University of California, Irvine, USA

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering

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TCSE: IEEE Computer Society's Tech. Council on Software Engin.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 31 May 2014

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ICSE '14

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SIGSOFT

ICSE '14: 36th International Conference on Software Engineering

May 31 - June 7, 2014

Hyderabad, India

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Overall Acceptance Rate 276 of 1,856 submissions, 15%

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Cited By

Wu DZhang HFeng YDong Z(2025)MITU: Locating relevant tutorial fragments of APIs with multi-source API knowledgeJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2024.112296222(112296)Online publication date: Apr-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2024.112296
Wang STian YHe D(2023)gDoc: Automatic Generation of Structured API DocumentationCompanion Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 202310.1145/3543873.3587310(53-56)Online publication date: 30-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3543873.3587310
Wu DFeng YZhang HXu B(2023)Automatic recognizing relevant fragments of APIs using API referencesAutomated Software Engineering10.1007/s10515-023-00401-031:1Online publication date: 19-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10515-023-00401-0
Eberhart ZBansal AMcMillan C(2022)A Wizard of Oz Study Simulating API Usage Dialogues With a Virtual AssistantIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2020.304093548:6(1883-1904)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2020.3040935
Zhang JJiang HRen ZZhang THuang Z(2021)Enriching API Documentation with Code Samples and Usage Scenarios from Crowd KnowledgeIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2019.291930447:6(1299-1314)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2019.2919304
Tao YJiang JLiu YXu ZQin SGrundy JLe Goues CLo D(2020)Understanding performance concerns in the API documentation of data science librariesProceedings of the 35th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3324884.3416543(895-906)Online publication date: 21-Dec-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3324884.3416543
Ajam GRodriguez CBenatallah B(2020)API Topic Issues Indexing, Exploration and Discovery for API Community Knowledge2020 XLVI Latin American Computing Conference (CLEI)10.1109/CLEI52000.2020.00028(178-185)Online publication date: Oct-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/CLEI52000.2020.00028
Ellmann MTimmann ISentilles SBoehm BTrubiani CKoziolek A(2019)A comparative study of FAQs for software developmentProceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGSOFT International Workshop on Software Qualities and Their Dependencies10.1145/3340495.3342750(8-11)Online publication date: 26-Aug-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3340495.3342750
Chen CYang YYang LZhang K(2019)A Human-as-Sensors Approach to API Documentation Integration and Its Effects on Novice Programmers2019 IEEE 26th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)10.1109/SANER.2019.8668026(197-206)Online publication date: Feb-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/SANER.2019.8668026
Chatterjee PDamevski KPollock LAugustine VKraft NStorey MAdams BHaiduc S(2019)Exploratory study of slack Q&A chats as a mining source for software engineering toolsProceedings of the 16th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1109/MSR.2019.00075(490-501)Online publication date: 26-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/MSR.2019.00075
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