Languages

Every translation belongs to a language, identified by a three-letter ISO 639-3 code. The languages query is the entry point when you want to offer users a choice of language before a choice of translation.

List languages

GraphQL

query {
  languages {
    code
    translationCount
  }
}

cURL

curl https://bibleql.org/graphql \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $BIBLEQL_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data '{"query":"query { languages { code translationCount } }"}'

Ruby

require "bibleql"

client = BibleQL::Client.new(
  api_key: ENV.fetch("BIBLEQL_API_KEY"),
  api_url: "https://bibleql.org/graphql"
)

client.languages.each do |language|
  puts "#{language.code}: #{language.translation_count} translations"
end

Node.js

import { BibleQLClient } from "bibleql-js";

const client = new BibleQLClient({
  apiKey: process.env.BIBLEQL_API_KEY!,
  apiUrl: "https://bibleql.org/graphql",
});

const languages = await client.languages();

languages.forEach((l) => console.log(l.code, l.translationCount));

Response

{
  "data": {
    "languages": [
      {
        "code": "swe",
        "translationCount": 1
      },
      {
        "code": "heb",
        "translationCount": 1
      },
      {
        "code": "spa",
        "translationCount": 7
      },
      // ... 28 more
    ]
  }
}

Each entry carries a code, a translationCount, and the translations themselves if you ask for them:

query {
  languages {
    code
    translationCount
    translations {
      identifier
      name
      note
    }
  }
}

That is usually all you need to populate a two-step language → translation picker in one request.

Language codes are not locales

A common source of confusion:

	Example	Used for
Language code	spa, eng, deu	The language field on a translation
Translation identifier	spa-rv1909, eng-web	The translation argument
Documentation locale	es, en	Which language this site is written in

Only the middle row is accepted by query arguments. Passing spa where a translation identifier is expected returns a not-found error.

Human-readable names

code is a machine identifier, not a label to show users. For display, read languageName on a translation:

query {
  translations {
    identifier
    language
    languageName
    name
  }
}

languageName is more specific than the code where it needs to be — English translations distinguish English, English (UK) and English (US) even though all three share the eng code.

Counts change

translationCount reflects what is loaded right now. Query it rather than hard-coding a number, which will go stale as translations are added.