Web API Fragility
How Robust is Your Mobile Application?
Tiago Espinha (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
Andy Zaidman (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
Hans Gerhard Gross (Esslingen University)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
Web APIs provide a systematic and extensible approach for application-to-application interaction. A large number of mobile applications makes use of web APIs to integrate services into apps. Each Web API's evolution pace is determined by their respective developer and mobile application developers are forced to accompany the API providers in their software evolution tasks. In this paper we investigate whether and how mobile application developers deal with the added distress of web APIs evolving. In particular, we studied how robust 43 high profile mobile applications are when dealing with mutated web API responses. Additionally, we interviewed three mobile application developers to better understand their choices and trade-offs regarding web API integration.