US 11,144,314 B2Granted

Systems and methods for software documentation and code generation management

AssigneeAccenture Global Solutions Limited

InventorsEmanuele Baldassarre, Luigi Lucca, Davide Di Perna, Ettore Carpinella, Giuseppe Melfa

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Abstract

The present disclosure relates to systems, methods, and computer readable medium for automatically managing API documentation and code generation. The disclosure provides an IDE plug-in that may import a machine readable reference documentation file from a documentation database, and create automatically generated code from the machine readable reference documentation file. Generally, the IDE plug-in may then allow a developer to validate their project back against the machine readable reference documentation file to ensure that all expected code is present in the project. This may allow the developer to ensure that the project properly meets the functional objectives intended for the API, before their implementation is deployed.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A system for generating program code for an application programming interface, the system comprising at least a first computing device, the first computing device including a processor, and wherein the first computing device is configured to perform the steps of:

receiving an interface agreement describing how an application programming interface will operate, the interface agreement having been written by a functional analyst human being user in unstructured natural language;
generating a reference documentation file based on the received interface agreement, the reference documentation file describing one or more classes of variables;
generating project files based on the generated reference documentation file, the project files including automatically generated code, the automatically generated code including annotations and class skeletons for each of the one or more classes of variables described in the reference documentation file;
allowing a developer user to add additional code to the project files before the project files are published as an application programming interface, the additional code including one or more methods, and one or more unit tests;
generating a project documentation file based on the project files;
validating the project files to ensure the project files, as including the automatically generated code and the additional code added by the developer user, are consistent with the reference documentation file generated from the interface agreement written by the functional analyst human being user;
receiving an error report, describing any differences between the project documentation file and the reference documentation file, and displaying the error report to the developer user;
and
allowing the developer user to publish the project files as an application programming interface upon successful validation.

6 more elements

A method of generating an application programming interface, the method comprising:

providing a developer user access to an integrated development environment program that includes a plug-in;
accessing an application programing interface repository database with the plug-in;
receiving a reference documentation file from the application programming interface repository database with the plug-in, the reference documentation file describing one or more classes of variables, the reference documentation file having been generated from an interface agreement that describes how an application programming interface will operate, the interface agreement having been written by a functional analyst human being user in unstructured natural language;
generating project files in the integrated development environment program with the plug-in based on the received reference documentation file, the project files including automatically generated code, the automatically generated code including annotations and class skeletons for each of the one or more classes of variables described in the reference documentation file;
allowing the developer user to add additional code to the project files before the project files are published as an application programming interface;
generating a project documentation file based on the project files;
at a back-end server:
comparing the reference documentation file generated from the interface agreement written by the functional analyst human being user to the project documentation file;
and
generating an error report, describing any differences between the project documentation file and the reference documentation file;
and
displaying the error report to the developer user with the plug-in.

9 more elements

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing software comprising instructions executable by one or more computers which, upon such execution, cause the one or more computers to:

provide to a developer user an integrated development environment program that includes a plug-in, on a first computing device;
access an application programming interface repository database on a second computing device with the plug-in, the application programming interface repository database including a plurality of reference documentation files, each of the plurality of reference documentation files having been generated from an interface agreement that describes how an application programming interface will operate, the interface agreement having been written by a functional analyst human being user in unstructured natural language;
communicate a list of one or more of the plurality of reference documentation files in the application programming interface repository database from the second computing device to the first computing device;
receive into the plug-in on the first computing device a selected reference documentation file from the second computing device, as selected by the developer user from the list of one or more of the plurality of reference documentation files, the selected reference documentation file describing one or more classes of variables;
generate project files in the integrated development environment program with the plug-in based on the selected reference documentation file, the project files including automatically generated code, the automatically generated code including annotations and class skeletons for each of the one or more classes of variables described in the selected reference documentation file;
allow a developer user to add additional code to the project files before the project files are published as an application programming interface;
generate a project documentation file based on the project files;
send the project documentation file from the first computing device to a third computing device;
communicate the selected reference documentation file from the second computing device to the third computing device;
compare the project documentation file to the selected reference documentation file generated from the interface agreement written by the functional analyst human being user, and generate an error report that describes any differences between the project documentation file and the reference documentation file, on the third computing device;
and
send the error report from the third computing device to the plug-in on the first computing device.

9 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.