Creating Bhagavad Gita Static JSON Files API on GitHub Pages Using Public-Domain Gita Data — Free to Deploy and Use

Techie post but as it is about Bhagavad Gita, I felt I should put it up here.

A few days back, I noticed that my Next.js Bhagavad Gita web app, https://gita-rsi.vercel.app/ was giving an error as its graphql backend Gita data service - https://gql.bhagavadgita.io/graphql - provided by somebody else, and so not in my control, was not working. As that backend service continued to be down (including now when I checked), I modified the app to use a simpler alternate service, with app functionality becoming limited. The app's About page has details.

This incident triggered me to explore whether I could become independent of others' backend data services by deploying my own Gita data backend. Very interestingly, the Gita data itself (basic verses, translations from 21 famous spiritual authors and commentaries from 16 famous spiritual commentators, etc.) is shared as JSON files under a public domain license.

While I don't plan to do such deployment right away, while my mind was fresh with this topic, I wanted to know what the possibilities are for free or low-cost deployment. I had some detailed discussions with ChatGPT on it and then put up a detailed blog post.

At the top of the post, there is a short section titled, "Summary of best option for generous free-tier Gita API implementation" which covers the option of static Gita JSON files API hosted on GitHub Pages, which should be free to deploy and use. This short section may be of interest to some readers.

The post also covers regular REST and GraphQL API options using an SQL database, though free-tier hosting for these typically comes with strict limits.

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