API specification-based function search engine using natural language query

摘要

Programmers nearly always use existing functions while developing their applications. However, the functions have grown more numerous and more diverse while the applications have grown more dependent on them. Thus, it's difficult for programmers to find what functions they want and know how to call those functions [1]. This paper present two novel approaches to address these problems. The first is the approach to find right functions based on the API specification. This approach can search suitable functions by their functionalities described in the API specification. The second is approach to automatically generate code for “function call”. In the second approach, programmer can call a function by natural language query. We have implemented a function search engine for Java, called FSE. Besides, we have also performed some evaluations to demonstrate that FSE is better than the existing online search engines in precision and recall.