What does Magical Record do that RESTKit does not do? Would I ever need both frameworks?

Question

could someone tell me the main features that distinguish Magical Record from RESTKit? They're both popular but they seem complementary, but I just need help in seeing what the relevant differences are. Is there a typical use case in which both frameworks are needed?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Magical Record is a wrapper around Core Data that gives you a number of higher level APIs that you can use to interact. This means you write less code to do common tasks.

RestKit is a wrapper around Core Data (or your basic model objects) and your RESTful interface to your server. RestKit can map your external data model to your internal data model and enact all of your server interaction. This means you write less code for interacting with the server and populating your model.

So, they aren't really comparable. You could look at using both together as they could be complementary.