Border Pulse

Real-time US-Mexico border wait times. Static site on GitHub Pages at borderpulse.com.

Stack

• Vite + React 18 + Tailwind + shadcn/ui
• Data: U.S. Customs and Border Protection official feed (bwt.cbp.gov/api/bwtpublicmod)
• Exchange rate: exchangerate.host / open.er-api.com
• Hosting: GitHub Pages (static), no backend
• Monetization: Adsterra Native Banner (live on borderpulse.com)

Data pipeline

scripts/fetch-cbp.mjs runs on a scheduled GitHub Action. It hits the CBP JSON endpoint, accepts either English or Spanish localized border/status values, normalizes the shape, and commits public/data/crossings.json. Same cadence for public/data/exchange-rate.json.

Paid southbound Google Maps estimates are paused and are not part of the production workflow. The retained scripts/fetch-sb.mjs utility is historical/manual only; production serves the official northbound CBP feed.

The client (src/components/utils/dataService.js) reads those static JSON files. No API, no auth, no rate limits.

Local dev

npm install
npm run dev

Refresh data locally:

npm run fetch:cbp
npm run fetch:fx
# Historical paid southbound utility; guarded and not used in production:
# ALLOW_PAID_SOUTHBOUND_FETCH=yes npm run fetch:sb

Deploy

Pushing to main triggers .github/workflows/deploy.yml, which builds and publishes to GitHub Pages. Custom domain borderpulse.com via public/CNAME + IONOS DNS (A records to GitHub Pages IPs).