DEV Community: Luis Porras

FreeShow: The Open Source Presentation App Your Church Needs

Luis Porras — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:34:11 +0000

Serving My Church Through Code

Ever since I joined Comunidad Familia Real, I've always had a deep desire to serve. Over time, I've been able to do that through the audiovisual team and currently as the leader of our worship band.

But I also wanted to contribute from my talent as a software developer. And I finally found the perfect way to do both.

Discovering FreeShow

If you've ever been part of a church tech team, you know the struggle: most presentation software for worship is either expensive, proprietary, or clunky. That's why I was thrilled when I discovered FreeShow — a free and open source presentation app designed specifically for churches and live events.

FreeShow lets you handle everything your church needs in one place:

Scripture display during sermons
Song lyrics with real-time live display
Images and slides for announcements
Instrumental audio playback
Welcome videos and media
Stage display for musicians and speakers

And the best part? It's completely free. No subscriptions, no licenses, no limitations.

Why FreeShow Stands Out

Here's what makes FreeShow special compared to other church presentation tools:

Feature	FreeShow	ProPresenter	EasyWorship
Price	Free	$399+	$199+
Open Source	Yes	No	No
Cross-platform	Windows, Mac, Linux	Windows, Mac	Windows only
Bible integration	Built-in	Built-in	Built-in
Live lyrics	Yes	Yes	Yes
MIDI support	Yes	Yes	Limited
NDI output	Yes	Yes	No

How We Use It at Our Church

At Comunidad Familia Real, we started implementing FreeShow to support our weekly services. Here's how we use it:

During the sermon — We display Scripture passages on screen so the congregation can follow along
Worship time — Live song lyrics are projected in real time as our band plays
Welcome and announcements — Videos and image slides before and between services
Instrumental background — Ambient music during prayer and reflection moments

The transition was smooth, and our team picked it up quickly. The interface is intuitive enough that even volunteers with no tech background can operate it.

From User to Contributor

I liked FreeShow so much that I decided to contribute back to the project. I'm excited to share that my first Pull Request was accepted and is available in the latest version of FreeShow!

View my PR on GitHub

There's something deeply satisfying about using your professional skills to serve your community AND contribute to a project that helps churches around the world.

Why Your Church Should Try FreeShow

If your church is:

Paying for expensive presentation software — FreeShow does what you need, for free
Using PowerPoint or Google Slides for worship — FreeShow is purpose-built for church services
Looking for something that "just works" — it's lightweight, fast, and easy to set up
Running on different operating systems — it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux

Give it a try. You have nothing to lose.

Get Started

Download FreeShow at freeshow.app
Import your song library or create new songs directly in the app
Add your Bible translations
Set up your output screens
You're ready for Sunday!

The FreeShow documentation is a great place to learn the basics, Garry Bjr's YouTube channel has excellent tutorials and walkthroughs, and the community on GitHub is welcoming and active.

Contribute!

FreeShow is open source and welcomes contributions. Whether you're a developer, designer, translator, or just someone who wants to help improve the documentation — there's a place for you.

Check out the GitHub repository to get started.

I'm grateful for the opportunities to serve and keep growing as a developer. Technology can be a powerful tool for our communities — and open source makes it accessible to everyone.

Have you used FreeShow or a similar tool at your church? I'd love to hear about your experience in the comments!

BibleQL: A GraphQL API for the Bible

Luis Porras — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:20:35 +0000

Why I Built BibleQL

I've always wanted a simple, developer-friendly way to access Bible text programmatically. Most existing APIs are either proprietary, limited in translations, or use REST endpoints that make it hard to fetch exactly the data you need.

That's why I created BibleQL — a GraphQL API that lets you query Bible verses and passages across 43 public domain translations in 31 languages.

What Is BibleQL?

BibleQL is an open-source GraphQL API built with Ruby on Rails 8.1 and PostgreSQL. It provides a single flexible endpoint where you can query exactly the Bible data you need — no more, no less.

Here's what a query looks like:

{
  passage(translation: "eng-web", reference: "John 3:16") {
    reference
    text
    translationName
    verses {
      bookName
      chapter
      verse
      text
    }
  }
}

And you get back exactly what you asked for:

{
  "data": {
    "passage": {
      "reference": "John 3:16",
      "text": "For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.",
      "translationName": "World English Bible",
      "verses": [
        {
          "bookName": "John",
          "chapter": 3,
          "verse": 16,
          "text": "For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life."
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Key Features

43 Bible translations in 31 languages (all public domain)
Flexible passage lookup — single verses, ranges, and multi-ranges (e.g., "Matthew 25:31-33,46")
Localized book names — query using book names in the translation's language (e.g., "Mateo 28:18-20" for Spanish, "Lucas 3:1-10")
Full-text search across all verses
Verse of the Day — a curated daily verse for any translation
Random verse — get a random verse filtered by testament or specific books
Bible index — browse the full structural hierarchy of any translation
Language discovery — list all available languages with their translations
Interactive Playground — try the API right in your browser at /playground

Supported Reference Formats

The passage query understands many reference formats:

Format	Example
Single verse	`"John 3:16"`
Verse range	`"John 3:16-18"`
Multiple ranges	`"Matthew 25:31-33,46"`
Full chapter	`"Genesis 1"`
Cross-chapter	`"Romans 12:1,3-4 & 13:2-4"`
Localized names	`"Mateo 28:18-20"`, `"Lucas 3:1-10"`

Client Libraries

To make it even easier to get started, I've built client SDKs:

Ruby: bibleql-ruby
Node.js: bibleql-js
Examples: bibleql-example

The Tech Stack

Ruby 4.0 / Rails 8.1 — the latest and greatest
PostgreSQL — reliable and performant
graphql-ruby — mature GraphQL implementation for Ruby
API Key authentication with environment-aware prefixes (bql_live_ / bql_test_)
Rate limiting via Rack::Attack (100 req/min per IP, 1,000 req/day per API key)
Docker + Kamal for deployment
GitHub Actions CI/CD — security scans, linting, and tests on every PR

Try It Out

The API is live at https://bibleql.org. You can explore it interactively using the Playground.

To get an API key, visit the API Key Request page and submit a request.

Looking for Contributors!

This is where I need your help. BibleQL is fully open source and I'd love for this to be a community-driven project. Whether you're a seasoned Rails developer or just getting started with open source, there's room for you.

Here are some areas where contributions would be especially welcome:

More Bible versions — this is a big one! Currently all 43 translations are public domain, but I'd love to expand the API with widely-used copyrighted versions like NVI (Nueva Version Internacional), RVR1960 (Reina-Valera 1960), NIV, ESV, and others. If you have experience navigating Bible text licensing — working with publishers, understanding API usage rights, or securing distribution agreements — I'd really appreciate your guidance. This is uncharted territory for me and any help figuring out the licensing path would be invaluable.
New query types — ideas for useful queries the API doesn't support yet
Client libraries — SDKs for Python, Go, Java, or any other language
Documentation — improve guides, add tutorials, or write usage examples
Bug fixes and improvements — check the issues tab for open tasks
Frontend apps — build something cool on top of the API!

Check out the GitHub repository and the Contributing Guide to get started.

Get in Touch

If you have questions, ideas, or just want to chat about the project, feel free to:

Open an issue on GitHub
Star the repo if you find it useful

I believe technology can be a powerful tool for making Scripture more accessible to everyone. Let's build this together.

BibleQL is open source. Bible translations included via open-bibles are Public Domain or Creative Commons licensed.

Usa el poder de Sidekiq Jobs con CronJobs

Luis Porras — Mon, 05 May 2025 14:43:28 +0000

Luis Porras for WebdoxCLM

Jun 7 '21

Corre tus tareas recurrentes con Sidekiq

#ruby #rails #tutorial #redis

Comments 2

3 min read

Corre tus tareas recurrentes con Sidekiq

Luis Porras — Mon, 07 Jun 2021 16:18:11 +0000

En Webdox utilizamos Sidekiq como nuestra plataforma para procesar tareas asíncronas. Sidekiq utiliza hilos (threads) para manejar varias tareas al mismo tiempo en un mismo proceso.

Tenemos muchas tareas que ejecutamos de forma asíncrona con Sidekiq, por ejemplo: El envío de notificaciones por correo, la reindexación de contratos, la generación masiva de contratos y el inicio de la firma electrónica de cada contrato masivo, etc

Sidekiq se puede usar de forma gratuita y de forma paga. Cuando usamos la forma gratuita hay ciertas funcionalidades que no se incluyen y una de estas es ejecutar CRON JOBS. Con esta funcionalidad podríamos tomar una tarea de Sidekiq y ejecutarla recurrentemente cada cierto tiempo con Cron jobs

Afortunadamente existen Gemas que funcionan como plugins de Sidekiq y en Webdox utilizamos una para ejecutar tareas recurrentes de forma gratuita, su nombre es Sidekiq Scheduler

A continuación un pequeño tutorial de cómo utilizar Sidekiq Scheduler

Instalación y Configuración

Agregamos la gema en nuestro Gemfile

# Gemfile
gem 'sidekiq-scheduler'

y Ejecutamos:

bundle install

Creamos un Worker de Sidekiq el cual se ejecutará cada cierto tiempo.

hello_world_worker.rb

require 'sidekiq-scheduler'

class HelloWorldWorker
  include Sidekiq::Worker

  def perform
    puts 'Hello world'
  end
end

Para configurar la periodicidad del Worker modificamos el archivo de configuración de Sidekiq, un apartado de Scheduler:

# config/sidekiq.yml

:schedule:
  hello_world:
    cron: '0 * * * * *'   # Runs once per minute
    class: HelloWorldWorker

Y corremos Sidekiq:

bundle exec sidekiq -C config/sidekiq.yml

Una vez iniciado Sidekiq veremos como se imprime "Hello world" cada minuto.

2021-06-07T15:54:38.710Z 62465 TID-ownzi9r98 INFO: Running in ruby 2.6.3p62 (2019-04-16 revision 67580) [x86_64-darwin20]
2021-06-07T15:54:38.710Z 62465 TID-ownzi9r98 INFO: See LICENSE and the LGPL-3.0 for licensing details.
2021-06-07T15:54:38.710Z 62465 TID-ownzi9r98 INFO: Upgrade to Sidekiq Pro for more features and support: http://sidekiq.org
2021-06-07T15:54:38.723Z 62465 TID-ownzi9r98 INFO: Loading Schedule
2021-06-07T15:54:38.723Z 62465 TID-ownzi9r98 INFO: Schedule empty! Set Sidekiq.schedule
2021-06-07T15:54:38.724Z 62465 TID-ownzi9r98 INFO: Schedules Loaded
2021-06-07T15:54:38.734Z 62465 TID-ownzi9r98 INFO: Reloading Schedule
2021-06-07T15:54:38.734Z 62465 TID-ownzi9r98 INFO: Loading Schedule
2021-06-07T15:54:38.790Z 62465 TID-ownzi9r98 INFO: Scheduling hello_world {"cron"=>"0 * * * * *", "class"=>"HelloWorldWorker", "queue"=>"default"}
2021-06-07T15:54:38.791Z 62465 TID-ownzi9r98 INFO: Schedules Loaded
2021-06-07T15:54:38.791Z 62465 TID-ownzi9r98 INFO: Starting processing, hit Ctrl-C to stop
2021-06-07T15:59:37.940Z 62990 TID-ov0v1hmpo HelloWorldWorker JID-4a465f9e9646157552de7f5c INFO: start
Hello world
2021-06-07T15:59:37.940Z 62990 TID-ov0v1hmpo HelloWorldWorker JID-4a465f9e9646157552de7f5c INFO: done: 0.0 sec
2021-06-07T15:59:37.940Z 62990 TID-ov0v1hmpo HelloWorldWorker JID-64dc6b6cb06ebf580c3faae6 INFO: start
Hello world
2021-06-07T15:59:37.940Z 62990 TID-ov0v1hmpo HelloWorldWorker JID-64dc6b6cb06ebf580c3faae6 INFO: done: 0.0 sec

Además tenemos la opción de visualizar las tareas recurrentes en el panel de administración de Sidekiq si realizamos la siguiente configuración:

# config.ru

require 'sidekiq/web'
require 'sidekiq-scheduler/web'

run Sidekiq::Web

Por último recomendamos utilizar la página CronTabGurú para cuando necesitemos configurar la periodicidad de las tareas recurrentes con la sintaxis de Cron Jobs.

Tener en cuenta que la sintaxis de cron jobs que utiliza Sidekiq Scheduler tiene una sección extra en la parte de adelante la cual nos permite configurar los segundos.