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SONAS: A System to Obtain Insights on Web APIs from Stack Overflow

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Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (ChineseCSCW 2020)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1330))

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Abstract

In recent years, we have witnessed the rapid development of types and quantities of Web APIs. However, it is challenging for users to select Web APIs that best match their requirements and to learn how to invoke a Web API correctly. Although Web API providers often publish documents that describe the functionalities of Web APIs and how to use them, users still have to collect information to acquire knowledge about the usage information of Web APIs. Stack Overflow, the largest programming-related question-and-answer (Q&A) website, has many posts about Web APIs. Therefore, we have designed and implemented a System to Obtain iNsights on Web APIs from Stack Overflow (SONAS). SONAS collects questions related to Web APIs and classifies them into different categories using a deep learning model. The statistics on the numbers of different types of questions indicate the usage information of Web APIs. Furthermore, SONAS predicts the future usage trends of Web APIs, based on a long short-term memory model with multi-task learning. The experiments on a real-world dataset prove SONAS can provide useful insights on Web APIs.

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Acknowledgments

This work is partially supported by National Key Research and Development Plan (No. 2018YFB1003800) and China National Science Foundation (Granted Number 62072301).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Naixuan Wang, Jian Cao, Qing Qi, Qi Gu & Shiyou Qian

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  1. Naixuan Wang
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  2. Jian Cao
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  3. Qing Qi
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  4. Qi Gu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jian Cao .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Shandong University, Jinan, China

    Yuqing Sun

  2. Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China

    Dongning Liu

  3. Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China

    Hao Liao

  4. Tongji University, Shanghai, China

    Hongfei Fan

  5. University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, China

    Liping Gao

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Wang, N., Cao, J., Qi, Q., Gu, Q., Qian, S. (2021). SONAS: A System to Obtain Insights on Web APIs from Stack Overflow. In: Sun, Y., Liu, D., Liao, H., Fan, H., Gao, L. (eds) Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. ChineseCSCW 2020. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1330. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2540-4_36

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2540-4_36

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  • Online ISBN: 978-981-16-2540-4

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