Church of Jesus Christ Content APIs

• Source: Two complementary REST APIs operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:
  • Content API v2 (metadata): https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/content/api/v2?uris=<path>&lang=eng — lightweight JSON returning type, headline, publication, referenceURI, image srcset
  • Content API v3 (full content): https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/api/v3/language-pages/type/content?lang=eng&uri=<path> — rich JSON returning full HTML body, footnotes with scripture cross-references, audio/video/PDF URLs, paragraph-level IDs, schema.org structured data
• Maintainer: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Intellectual Reserve, Inc.)
• License: Copyrighted — personal/non-commercial use per Terms of Use
• Suitability Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5) — the primary and only source for official Church content; clean REST APIs with rich structured data; no authentication required

Coverage

The Church's content platform hosts the largest collection of Latter-day Saint scripture study resources. Content types confirmed via API exploration:

Content Type	Format	Scope
General Conference Talks	general-conference-talk	190+ years of talks with full text, audio, PDF
General Conference Sessions	general-conference-session	Session manifests with talk listings
Come, Follow Me Curriculum	book → lessons	Annual manuals for home/church study
Gospel Principles	book → chapter	47 foundational doctrine chapters
Teachings of Presidents	book → chapter	Series covering multiple Church presidents
Seminary/Institute Manuals	book	Educational manuals
Magazines	magazine	Liahona/Ensign issues

Quality

Excellent. This is the Church's own production content system — the same data that serves churchofjesuschrist.org and Gospel Library apps. Content is professionally produced, reviewed, and maintained. Paragraph-level IDs enable precise cross-referencing. Structured HTML is highly parseable.

HTML Content Structure

The v3 API returns rich HTML with structure that maps naturally to GospeLib:

• Paragraph IDs: Every paragraph has unique data-aid attributes for precise referencing
• Scripture references: <a class="scripture-ref" href="/study/scriptures/{volume}/{book}/{chapter}"> — maps directly to GospeLib's PassageRef system
• Footnotes: referenceUris[] arrays with typed scripture-ref links
• Multimedia: Audio MP3, video HLS/MP4, PDF available via meta.audio[] and meta.pdf
• Schema.org: Article (talks), Book (manifests), Chapter (individual chapters)

Gaps Filled

• ✅ LDS Study Resources (Gap #14) — the only authoritative source for official Church study materials
• ✅ General Conference Archive (Gap #15) — complete access to conference talks with full text, audio, and video
• ✅ Curriculum Content (Gap #16) — Come, Follow Me and other study manuals with scripture-rich lesson content
• 🔶 Enhanced Commentary — conference talks and manual chapters serve as modern commentary/exposition on scripture passages via embedded scripture-ref links

Integration Notes

• v3 API is the primary integration point — returns complete content with metadata, footnotes, and multimedia
• v2 API supplements with lightweight metadata useful for catalog/index building
• Scripture references in content body use /study/scriptures/{vol}/{book}/{ch} URIs that are parsed to GospeLib PassageRef objects via volume mapping (dc-testament → dc, etc.)
• data-aid paragraph IDs enable GospeLib to reference specific paragraphs within talks/chapters
• HTML body requires parsing (lxml) to extract text, scripture refs, and structure
• Book manifests provide discovery/enumeration of all chapters in any manual
• Multilingual content accessible via lang parameter (190+ languages)
• Terms of Use compliance: GospeLib stores only metadata, extracted scripture cross-references, and brief paragraph excerpts (~200 chars) — full body text is never persisted

Corpus Downloader

The church-content driver in tools/corpus-downloader implements fetching via three configurable datasets:

Dataset	Content	Cache Pattern
conference	General Conference talks (last 3 years)	church-content/conference/{year}-{month}/
come-follow-me	CFM curriculum (current year)	church-content/come-follow-me/
manuals	Curated gospel manuals	church-content/manuals/{slug}/

Output schema: church-content → one JSON file per collection at church-content/{collectionId}.json.