Easy-going Development of Event-Driven Applications by Iterating a Search-Select-Superpose Loop

Abstract

Today's application development process depends heavily on the usage of application programming interfaces (APIs) for many kinds of frameworks. Time spent searching for appropriate API members and understanding their usages tends to occupy much of the time required for the whole development process. This paper proposes a new approach for developing application programs based on APIs in a simple way: through code development by iterating a Search-Select-Superpose (SSS) loop. The approach comprises three phases. In the Search phase, the user searches for a way to implement a desired functionality by combining API calls. The search results are shown to the user as a list of outlines (sets of words) attached to code skeletons. A code skeleton, chosen in the Select phase, is then merged with the program at hand in the Superpose phase. The entire process is implemented through the construction of an indexed dataset composed of code skeletons extracted from open-source repositories, and through the use of a tool to control the SSS loop. We have developed a prototype of the proposed system. In this paper, the design and implementation of the proposed system are described. The effectiveness of the system was confirmed through empirical results from experiments with event-driven Android application development.