I'm reading Show Your Work by Austin Kleon because one of my goals this year is to do a better job of building up my portfolio of content. One goal I've had for a while is to build a bible application. Why? there are a ton of Bible Applications out there does the world really need another one. Likely not but I'd like one that I've built myself and can search myself in whatever ways I'd like to.
This journey started in 2022 or 2023 as something simple my friend Justin and I could build together to see if we could work together on something. Him managing the infrastructure me doing the code. This thought like a lot of good ideas languished between both our busy lives parenting, working, etc...
In March 2025 I decided to actually put some action towards this goal and I've now got an alpha version ready to share:
In the video above you can see I've built a working prototype of a bible application. The alpha version meets the following requirements:
- User can access application locally
- User can access Bible Table of Contents(also known as books in the bible)
- User can access Select a Book and view the Chapters in a bible book
- User can select a Chapter from a Book in the Bible and then page through the chapter.
The requirements I'm setting for the next release:
- Make the GUI prettier
- Consistent location for paging buttons
- Page through full bible not just one book
- Breadcrumbs for navigating
- Clean up table of contents and chapters pages so their filterable and look nicer
- Better presentation of actual scripture on scripture pages.
- Be able to access the application through the Internet:
- Load data into a Amazon MySQL DB
- Run backend and frontend on EC2 Instance
- Enable access to that server this doesn't mean the need for eventual url bible.datadidit.com
For those interested here's a journal of my days to get to alpha version:
- Day 1 (2025-03-09):
- Found the data and setup git on computer
- Day 2 (2025-03-10):
- Read all lines via Java
- Setup maven project
- Setup initial Entity Objects
- Day 3 (2025-03-11):
- Setup logging in the project
- Converted from line to verse object
- Day 4 (2025-03-16):
- Set up sqlite DB
- Used SpringData in testing
- Ingested Bible Books into database
- Day 5 (2025-03-18)
- Very frustrating day struggling to get composite key insert to work.
- Day 6 (2025-03-19)
- Finally broke through frustration it was the version of the jbdc driver I was using. (BLOG worthy)
- Day 7 (2025-03-22)
- Set up rest layer with additional queries still some additional fine tuning.
- Day 9 (2025-06-11):
- Setup swagger for application
- Day 10 (2025-07-26):
- Added more swagger docs.
- Added continuous integration for java portion using github-actions
- Starting refresher course on Javascript it's been a minute here
- Day 11 (2026-01-10):
- Refamiliarize myself with where I left off with the backend portion
- Got Books and Chapters page working.
- Day 12 (2026-01-17):
- Finished up custom paging implementation to be able to page through chapters in a book
- Updated GUI to have previous and next page button within a chapter so it's easier to read through.
As always thanks for reading!!!