isVisaRequired.com
Visa requirement checker. pnpm monorepo (originally built on Replit), deployed on Vercel.
Structure
artifacts/visa-checker — React + Vite frontend (the website). Built and served by Vercel.artifacts/api-server — Express 5 API. Deployed as a Vercel serverless function via api/index.ts.artifacts/visa-app — Expo (React Native) mobile app. Not deployed by Vercel.artifacts/mockup-sandbox — internal UI sandbox. Not deployed.lib/* — shared workspace packages (db, api-zod, api-client-react, api-spec).
How Vercel builds this
See vercel.json:
- Install:
pnpm install for the visa-checker + api-server workspaces.
- Build:
pnpm --filter @workspace/visa-checker build → static output in artifacts/visa-checker/dist/public.
- API:
/api/* is rewritten to the api/index.ts serverless function, which runs the Express app. The frontend calls the API at same-origin /api/..., so no API URL config is needed.
- SPA fallback: all other routes rewrite to
index.html.
Required environment variables (set in Vercel project settings)
| Variable | Used by | Notes |
|---|
DATABASE_URL | api-server | Postgres connection string (e.g. Neon). Required — server throws without it. |
CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEY | api-server | Clerk auth (My Travels, admin). |
CLERK_SECRET_KEY | api-server | Clerk backend key. |
VITE_CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEY | frontend (build-time) | Same Clerk publishable key, exposed to the browser. |
VITE_GA_MEASUREMENT_ID | frontend (build-time) | Google Analytics (optional). |
NODE_ENV=production | both | Vercel sets this automatically; keeps pino logging worker-free for serverless. |
CRON_SECRET | api-server | Authorises the scheduled jobs. Generate with openssl rand -hex 32 — hex, never anything with two dots, which Clerk would read as a session token. Without it the cron endpoints return 503 and run nothing. |
RESEND_API_KEY | api-server | Sends visa-alert emails. Optional: alerts are recorded either way, but nothing is emailed without it. |
INDEXNOW_KEY | api-server | Optional override. The site's existing key ships in the code, so IndexNow works with nothing set — an IndexNow key is public by design. Set this only to rotate it, and mint a new key only if you must: a fresh key starts from zero trust and a smaller quota. |
BING_API_KEY | api-server | Optional. From Bing Webmaster Tools → Settings → API access. Lets the same job use Bing's direct URL Submission API within the allowance Bing reports. |
PORT / BASE_PATH are Replit dev-server vars and are not needed on Vercel (the build defaults BASE_PATH=/).
Getting search engines to crawl the whole site
The site publishes ~38,000 pages. Sitemaps alone leave most of them uncrawled for
months, so GET /api/cron/submit-urls (Vercel Cron, 06:20 UTC daily) pushes them
out in daily batches — landing pages and hubs first, then blog posts, then every
passport → destination pair, and never the same URL twice until everything else
has had a turn. What has been sent is recorded in the url_submissions table.
Two back ends, both optional and independent:
- IndexNow — the open protocol behind Bing, Yandex, Naver and Seznam. No
account and nothing to configure: the key ships in the code and is served at
/{key}.txt, which is exactly how the protocol proves host ownership. It
carries the bulk of the work — up to 1,000 URLs a day until the site has been
covered once, then 200 a day to keep it fresh. Bing publishes no daily figure,
so the job submits in chunks of 100 (larger batches are refused with 403),
stops after five refused chunks in a row, and records only what was accepted.
A refused chunk is simply retried the next day, which means the job discovers
the real quota rather than assuming one.
- Bing URL Submission API (
BING_API_KEY) — direct, but rate-limited per site.
The job asks Bing what today's allowance is (GetUrlSubmissionQuota) and never
exceeds it. A new site typically gets ten a day; the allowance rises as Bing
comes to trust the site, and the job picks that up automatically.
IndexNow runs out of the box; BING_API_KEY only adds the direct Bing channel on top.
To see what tomorrow would do without sending anything, sign in as an admin and
open /api/cron/submit-urls?dry=1.
Local development (Replit / local)
pnpm install
pnpm --filter @workspace/api-server dev # API
pnpm --filter @workspace/visa-checker dev # frontend (needs PORT + BASE_PATH set)
pnpm --filter @workspace/db push # apply DB schema (dev only)
See replit.md for full feature/endpoint documentation.
