- author = "Mohamed Aymen Saied and Erick Raelijohn and Edouard Batot and Michalis Famelis and Houari Sahraoui",
- title = "Towards assisting developers in {API} usage by automated recovery of complex temporal patterns",
- journal = "Information and Software Technology",
- year = "2020",
- volume = "119",
- pages = "106213",
- month = mar,
- note = "Special section on Search-based Software Engineering track at GECCO 2018",
- keywords = "genetic algorithms, genetic programming, SBSE, Tapir, Java, Android mobil app",
- ISSN = "0950-5849",
-
URL = "
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0950584918301642",
-
DOI = "
doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2019.106213",
- size = "15 pages",
-
abstract = "Context
Despite the many advantages, the use of external libraries through their APIs remains difficult because of the usage patterns and constraints that are hidden or not properly documented. Existing work provides different techniques to recover API usage patterns from client programs in order to help developers use those libraries. However, most of these techniques produce patterns that generally do not involve temporal properties. Objective
In this paper, we discuss the problem of temporal usage patterns recovery and propose an algorithm to solve it. We also discuss how the obtained patterns can be used at different stages of client development.
Method
We address the recovery of temporal API usage patterns as an optimization problem and solve it using a genetic-programming algorithm.
Results
Our evaluation on different APIs shows that the proposed algorithm allows to derive non-trivial temporal usage that are useful and generalizable to new API clients.
Conclusion
Recovering API usage temporal patterns helps client developers to use APIs in an appropriate way. In addition to potentially improve productivity, such patterns also helps preventing errors that result from an incorrect use of the APIs.",
-
notes = "Tree GP of Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) nodes. Fitness
accuracy and confidence. Subtree crossover and mutation
(LTL insert operator, encapsulation). Pop=300, gens=50.
45 android apps 8 APIs.
IDE, GenLTL, Texada model checker applied to mine execution traces. Java source code analysis, control flow graph CFG. JavaDoc documentation, ease of use by human programmer.
Universite du Quebec a Rimouski, Canada
Universite de Montreal, Canada",
