Faith Comes By Hearing Python API Docs | dltHub

Build a Faith Comes By Hearing-to-database pipeline in Python using dlt with AI Workbench support for Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex.

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Faith Comes By Hearing (Bible Brain) is a RESTful API that provides JSON-formatted Bible content and related resources. The REST API base URL is https://4.dbt.io and All requests require a developer API key..

dlt is an open-source Python library that handles authentication, pagination, and schema evolution automatically. dlthub provides AI context files that enable code assistants to generate production-ready pipelines. Install with uv pip install "dlt[workspace]" and start loading Faith Comes By Hearing data in under 10 minutes.


What data can I load from Faith Comes By Hearing?

Here are some of the endpoints you can load from Faith Comes By Hearing:

ResourceEndpointMethodData selectorDescription
bibles/biblesGETdataList of available Bibles.
books/booksGETdataList of books for a given Bible.
filesets/filesetsGETdataFileset information (audio, text, etc.).
languages/languagesGETdataLanguages supported by the API.
countries/countriesGETdataCountries where Bibles are available.

How do I authenticate with the Faith Comes By Hearing API?

Authentication is done via an API key passed as the query parameter 'key' (or an equivalent header).

1. Get your credentials

  1. Open https://4.dbt.io/api_key/request in a browser.
  2. Fill in Name, Email, intended usage, Application Name, and Application URL.
  3. Agree to the DBP License Agreement.
  4. Submit the form.
  5. The team will review the request and email you the API key.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

[sources.faith_comes_by_hearing_source] api_key = "your_api_key_here"

dlt reads this automatically at runtime — never hardcode tokens in your pipeline script. For production environments, see setting up credentials with dlt for environment variable and vault-based options.


How do I set up and run the pipeline?

Set up a virtual environment and install dlt:

uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate uv pip install "dlt[workspace]"

1. Install the dlt AI Workbench:

dlt ai init --agent <your-agent> # <agent>: claude | cursor | codex

This installs project rules, a secrets management skill, appropriate ignore files, and configures the dlt MCP server for your agent. Learn more →

2. Install the rest-api-pipeline toolkit:

dlt ai toolkit rest-api-pipeline install

This loads the skills and context about dlt the agent uses to build the pipeline iteratively, efficiently, and safely. The agent uses MCP tools to inspect credentials — it never needs to read your secrets.toml directly. Learn more →

3. Start LLM-assisted coding:

Use /find-source to load data from the Faith Comes By Hearing API into DuckDB.

The rest-api-pipeline toolkit takes over from here — it reads relevant API documentation, presents you with options for which endpoints to load, and follows a structured workflow to scaffold, debug, and validate the pipeline step by step.

4. Run the pipeline:

python faith_comes_by_hearing_pipeline.py

If everything is configured correctly, you'll see output like this:

Pipeline faith_comes_by_hearing_pipeline load step completed in 0.26 seconds 1 load package(s) were loaded to destination duckdb and into dataset faith_comes_by_hearing_data The duckdb destination used duckdb:/faith_comes_by_hearing.duckdb location to store data Load package 1749667187.541553 is LOADED and contains no failed jobs

Inspect your pipeline and data:

dlt pipeline faith_comes_by_hearing_pipeline show

This opens the Pipeline Dashboard where you can verify pipeline state, load metrics, schema (tables, columns, types), and query the loaded data directly.


Python pipeline example

This example loads bibles and filesets from the Faith Comes By Hearing API into DuckDB. It mirrors the endpoint and data selector configuration from the table above:

import dlt from dlt.sources.rest_api import RESTAPIConfig, rest_api_resources @dlt.source def faith_comes_by_hearing_source(api_key=dlt.secrets.value): config: RESTAPIConfig = { "client": { "base_url": "https://4.dbt.io", "auth": { "type": "api_key", "api_key": api_key, }, }, "resources": [ {"name": "bibles", "endpoint": {"path": "bibles", "data_selector": "data"}}, {"name": "languages", "endpoint": {"path": "languages", "data_selector": "data"}} ], } yield from rest_api_resources(config) def get_data() -> None: pipeline = dlt.pipeline( pipeline_name="faith_comes_by_hearing_pipeline", destination="duckdb", dataset_name="faith_comes_by_hearing_data", ) load_info = pipeline.run(faith_comes_by_hearing_source()) print(load_info)

To add more endpoints, append entries from the resource table to the "resources" list using the same name, path, and data_selector pattern.


How do I query the loaded data?

Once the pipeline runs, dlt creates one table per resource. You can query with Python or SQL.

Python (pandas DataFrame):

import dlt data = dlt.pipeline("faith_comes_by_hearing_pipeline").dataset() sessions_df = data.bibles.df() print(sessions_df.head())

SQL (DuckDB example):

SELECT * FROM faith_comes_by_hearing_data.bibles LIMIT 10;

In a marimo or Jupyter notebook:

import dlt data = dlt.pipeline("faith_comes_by_hearing_pipeline").dataset() data.bibles.df().head()

See how to explore your data in marimo Notebooks and how to query your data in Python with dataset.


What destinations can I load Faith Comes By Hearing data to?

dlt supports loading into any of these destinations — only the destination parameter changes:

DestinationExample value
DuckDB (local, default)"duckdb"
PostgreSQL"postgres"
BigQuery"bigquery"
Snowflake"snowflake"
Redshift"redshift"
Databricks"databricks"
Filesystem (S3, GCS, Azure)"filesystem"

Change the destination in dlt.pipeline(destination="snowflake") and add credentials in .dlt/secrets.toml. See the full destinations list.


Troubleshooting

Authentication errors

  • 401 Unauthorized – Occurs when the key parameter is missing, invalid, or revoked. Verify that the API key is correct and included as a query parameter.

Rate limiting

  • 429 Too Many Requests – The API enforces a limit of 60 requests per minute per key. Implement back‑off and retry after the Retry-After header.

Pagination quirks

  • The API uses limit and offset query parameters for pagination. Ensure offset is incremented correctly; missing or incorrect offsets can result in duplicate or missing records.

Ensure that the API key is valid to avoid 401 Unauthorized errors. Also, verify endpoint paths and parameters to avoid 404 Not Found errors.


Next steps

Continue your data engineering journey with the other toolkits of the dltHub AI Workbench:

  • data-exploration — Build custom notebooks, charts, and dashboards for deeper analysis with marimo notebooks.
  • dlthub-runtime — Deploy, schedule, and monitor your pipeline in production.
dlt ai toolkit data-exploration install dlt ai toolkit dlthub-runtime install

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