Independent Vue 3 + Vite guide for Irish public services. It provides official service links, life-event checklists, agency information, multilingual UI, local checklist progress, PWA assets, and a Netlify Functions backend for weekly source checks.

This is not a government website. Always verify important actions on the official source.

• Vue 3 + Vite frontend
• Languages: English, Chinese, Portuguese, Italian
• Browser language auto-detection with manual language switch
• Clean history URLs, for example /guides and /guide/moving-to-ireland
• Searchable official service links
• Life-event checklists with local progress storage
• Agency directory and source notes
• PWA manifest, service worker, icon, and logo
• Netlify Functions API for status, source snapshots, and manual updates
• Netlify Scheduled Function for weekly official-source checks
• Netlify Blobs storage for latest update status and source snapshots
• System update timestamp loaded from the backend at runtime

publichelper-ireland/
  netlify/
    functions/            Netlify Functions backend endpoints
    shared/               Shared function helpers
  public/                 Static assets, manifest, service worker
  server/                 Shared update logic and local Node update service
  src/
    data/                 Content and update status JSON
    i18n/                 Translation dictionaries
    App.vue               Main Vue app
    main.js               Vue bootstrap and service worker registration
    styles.css            Global styling

Frontend only:

npm install
npm run dev

Open the local Vite URL shown in the terminal.

Frontend plus Netlify Functions:

npx netlify dev

Use .env.example as the starting point for local environment variables.

npm run build

The production output is generated in dist/.

The update logic checks all official source URLs, records the latest system update time, and stores a source snapshot.

For local Node runs, status is written to:

src/data/update-status.json

Commands:

npm run update:dry-run   # Validate update flow without fetching remote pages
npm run update:once      # Fetch sources once and update status/snapshots
npm run update:service   # Start local Node service with weekly interval

Local Node service endpoints:

GET  http://127.0.0.1:8787/health
GET  http://127.0.0.1:8787/status
GET  http://127.0.0.1:8787/sources
POST http://127.0.0.1:8787/update

Generated source snapshots are ignored by Git under server/data/.

Netlify backend endpoints:

GET  /api/health
GET  /api/status
GET  /api/sources
POST /api/update
POST /api/update?dryRun=true

Netlify stores update status and source snapshots in the publichelper-ie-updates Blobs store by default. The frontend calls /api/status at runtime; if the API is unavailable, it falls back to the checked-in src/data/update-status.json.

This project deploys the frontend and backend as one Netlify site.

The repository already includes netlify.toml:

Build command: npm run build
Publish directory: dist
Functions directory: netlify/functions

Clean URL routing is handled by the fallback redirect in netlify.toml, after the /api/* function redirect:

[[redirects]]
  from = "/api/*"
  to = "/.netlify/functions/:splat"
  status = 200

[[redirects]]
  from = "/*"
  to = "/index.html"
  status = 200

Deployment steps:

1. Push this project to GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket.
2. In Netlify, create a new project from the Git repository.
3. If this project is inside a larger repository, set the base directory:

Base directory: publichelper-ireland

4. Keep the build settings from netlify.toml.
5. Add environment variables in Netlify Project configuration > Environment variables:

UPDATE_BLOB_STORE=publichelper-ie-updates
UPDATE_FETCH_TIMEOUT_MS=5000
UPDATE_FETCH_CONCURRENCY=15
UPDATE_FUNCTION_SECRET=<long random secret>

UPDATE_FUNCTION_SECRET is optional but recommended. When set, manual updates require:

curl -X POST "https://YOUR-SITE.netlify.app/api/update" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET"

6. Deploy the site.
7. After the first deploy, seed the backend status by running the weekly-update scheduled function from the Netlify Functions UI, or call /api/update manually.

Weekly backend updates are configured in netlify.toml:

[functions."weekly-update"]
  schedule = "@weekly"

Netlify runs @weekly schedules on Sunday at 00:00 UTC.

• Checklist progress and language choice are stored in browser localStorage.
• The service worker is only registered in production builds and does not cache /api/* responses.
• Official service names are often kept in English inside translations so users can match them with government websites.