Should I use the REST API directly?

Our REST API is well documented and supported for our customers who wish to use the API directly.  However, we recommend that in most cases, customers use our REST client libraries instead of our raw REST API because:

• The client library API is more discoverable and easier to use, especially in IDEs which provide intellisense-like features
• Encoding and decoding of message data to the correct native datatype is handled automatically, allowing interoperability between all platforms
• Data is binary encoded by default for greater efficiency
• They can route around network partitioning issues or data center availability issues automatically
• Authentication is simplified both as a token issuer and as a token consumer
• Pagination is supported
• Symmetric encryption is supported
• In version 1.1 client libraries, automatic idempotent REST publishes (so if a request has to be retried in another datacenter due to network issues, it ensures that even if the first request actually succeeded but the client library didn't receive the success response, there won't be a duplicate message published)

Find out more about when to choose an Ably REST or Realtime library.