Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

6-2018

Abstract

The documentation of popular APIs is spread across many formats, from vendor-curated reference documentation to Stack Overflow threads. For developers, it is often not obvious from where a particular piece of information can be retrieved. To understand this documentation landscape, we systematically conducted Google searches for the elements of ten popular APIs. We found that their documentation is widely dispersed among many sources, that GitHub and Stack Overflow play a prominent role among the search results, and that most sources are quick to document new API functionalities. These findings inform API vendors about where developers find documentation about their products, they inform developers about places to look for documentation, and they enable researchers to further study the software documentation landscape.

Keywords

API documentation, GitHub, Software documentation, Popular APIs

Discipline

Software Engineering

Research Areas

Software and Cyber-Physical Systems

Publication

WAPI '18: Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on API Usage and Evolution, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2018 June 2-4

First Page

19

Last Page

22

ISBN

9781450357548

Identifier

10.1145/3194793.3194796

Publisher

IEEE Computer Society

City or Country

Los Alamitos, CA

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1145/3194793.3194796

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