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Proceedings of the 20th Conference on Computer Science and Intelligence Systems (FedCSIS)

Annals of Computer Science and Information Systems, Volume 43

Enhancing API documentation by inter-endpoint dependency graphs

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15439/2025F8035

Citation: Proceedings of the 20th Conference on Computer Science and Intelligence Systems (FedCSIS), M. Bolanowski, M. Ganzha, L. Maciaszek, M. Paprzycki, D. Ślęzak (eds). ACSIS, Vol. 43, pages 357–362 ()

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Abstract. APIs are the main mechanism for integrating heterogeneous components in modern software systems. API documentation typically treats each endpoint as autonomous, leaving out information about other endpoints that produce or consume input or output data, which is useful in rapidly orchestrating valid call sequences. This makes the development, testing and maintenance of systems that use APIs to internally implement business logic, or integrate with third-party API-based services, more complex. This paper addresses this gap by introducing static and dynamic analysis methods to automatically discover and document inter-endpoint dependencies; static analysis uses existing API documentation, while dynamic is based on logging API usage. Both methods are integrated into RADAR, a tool for extracting and visualizing graphs, to illustrate such inter-endpoint dependencies through exchanged data. Case study on the PayPal API demonstrates the value of adding dependency graphs to API documentation to support rapid development and documentation of software systems.

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