UART APIs in Peripheral and Common SDK

[Aadishri GS]

What is the difference between APIs in below sections:

 app_uart_xxx  ( under nRF5 SDK v15.3.0 > API Reference > SDK common libraries) 

nrfx_uart_xxx ( under  nRF5 SDK v15.3.0 > API Reference > Peripheral drivers > Peripheral drivers )?

And I understand we must use the APIs which are NOT legacy. Please clarify

[Kenneth]

Hi,

So there are various UART drivers and libraries in the nRF SDK, e.g. app_uart ("old" lib), libuarte ("new" lib), nrf_drv_uart ("old" driver) and nrfx_uarte ("new" driver).

They provide different abstraction and functionality of using the UART peripheral in an application.

In general the nrfx* is the low level driver that give you full control over the peripheral, while the app*/lib* library give you more high level api where you don't need to think about the low level hardware registers.

Which to use depends on your requirements, if you find that the app*/lib* provide the functionality you need then there is no need to use the nrfx* driver.

Best regards,
Kenneth