Towards generating templates of method body based on method name and related identifiers

Abstract

In modern software development, developers have to select and combine appropriate APIs from software libraries to implement any features. This paper proposes an approach that takes as input a method name which a developer is attempting to create, and suggests APIs that are likely used as a template of method body. By using the template as a reference and/or editing the template, the developer can write the method body. Our approach generates templates from association rules that associate APIs with identifiers such as method names, class names, and field types/names included in a large set of source files.