An easy way of integrating to STEP is to use the browser to render STEP and simply integrate with the URL. These URLs control a number of different parameters, ranging from Bible references, version and commentaries, display options, search terms, ... The following page attempts to describe the different parts of the URL:.

The STEP URL defined

The following fragment is taken directly from the online version and illustrate the different parts of the URL:

...

• When a selected resource does not contain strong numbers, STEP will carry out the search on the ESV but display the results from the selected resources. This obviously means that the results will not be clickable.
• When passing full unicode, STEP may decide to remove cantillation/pointing/accents/vowels depending on options and searches to ensure search results are found correctly. Unicode is also normalised at index time. This means the different combinations of characters in the Unicode word will not affect the results.

Combining data types

Default values

Ordered queries

...

With powerful individual searches comes the power of combining searches. Combining terms (a term is something like type=data) allows the following operations:

• Looking up a specific Bible passage
• Restricting a search to a portion of the Bible (e.g to the book of Genesis, or several books, etc.)
• Refining searches of the kind (e.g. carrying out one search, then reducing the results by another, etc.).
• Combining different types of searches to get great results

A few rules govern how a 'command line' is interpreted. A 'command line' is the entries q paramater (e.g. reference=Genesis.1|version=ESV|version=NIV|strong=H0001)

Data types are combined with the pipe character: |

Governing rules

Defaults for missing parts

All 'lookups' (whether a search for a term or displaying the Bible scriptures to display on screen) relies at minimum on 2 key elements:

• A "version" (i.e. a Bible or Commentary).
• A reference

If the version is omitted in the URL, the ESV is assumed. If the reference is omitted in the URL, then one of two things happens:

• if there are proper search terms (i.e. not version= and not reference=) in the URL, the search will be defaulted to the entire module. A command line of "version=NIV|version=ASV|text=Abraham", then the word Abraham is searched for all references between Genesis and Revelation
• If there are not any proper search terms, then the first chapter of the selected text (or ESV if there are no selected versions). 

Order of the command line

Furthermore, the order of items may affect the results. In other words, the elements in the command line are a list, not a set. STEP may decide to re-order these to optimize the search order. However, the order is particular important for all version= data elements. The first version= token identifies the versification.

The below example illustrates this. (OHB is the Hebrew text)

1. version=OHB|reference=Psalm.3.2
2. version=ESV|reference=Psalm.3.2
3. version=OHB|version=ESV|reference=Psalm.3.2
4. version=ESV|version=OHB|reference=Psalm.3.2

The following observations can be drawn:

• The blue command lines are identical in meaning
• The red command lines are identical in meaning
• The blue lines refer to a different verse to the red lines.

This is because the OHB module numbers verse 1 in the Psalms as the canonical Psalm heading.

STEP has very strong support for versifications and supports a growing number of versifications. This is always done transparently. This means STEP can support searching across Bibles that are made of different versification. STEP can also display parallel views or interlinears and will transparently line up Psalm 3.1 in the Hebrew with Psalm 3.2 of the English text.

Options

Together with the search query (q=...), one can specify a set of options. These are used to adjust the display of search query. These are only used during Bible text retrievals and not during search results displays. In terms of the user interface, these are triggered by selecting the options from the 'cog menu'.

Note: Some options are defaulted if the options parameter is missing. Also some options (such as Words of Christ) are only available for some Bibles). If the option is not applicable, it will simply be ignored.

The following options are currently available:

In order to obtain the currently available versions, there are two options, the first of which is preferred (though not always possible)

• Read the step.keyedVersions variable from the browser's javascript window context.
• Until now, the only consumer of web services is STEP itself. The following call was used in a previous version and there are currently no consumers: http://<step-server>/rest/module/getAllModules/

It is usually recommended to leave the options out on the first call and allow the user to select the options through the cog menu.

Different display modes

STEP displays the Bible, commentaries and search results in different ways. There are 5 major ways of displaying these and all of them can be overridden through the 'cog menu'.