International Job Board

A full-stack job aggregator built for international students and visa seekers. Scrapes remote job listings, flags roles that mention visa sponsorship, and presents them in a searchable, filterable UI.

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Tech Stack

• Backend: Ruby on Rails 8 (API mode), PostgreSQL
• Frontend: React + Vite
• Scraper: HTTParty hitting the RemoteOK public API
• Deployment: Render (API), Vercel (Frontend)

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Features

• One-click job scraping from RemoteOK
• Automatic visa-friendly detection via keyword matching (sponsor, visa, work rights, international students, relocation)
• Search by title, company, or location
• Clean descriptions — HTML tags, encoding artifacts, and spam text stripped on ingestion
• Duplicate prevention via unique index on source_url

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Ruby 3.x
• Rails 8.x
• PostgreSQL
• Node.js + npm

Backend Setup

git clone https://github.com/your-username/job-aggregator.git
cd job-aggregator

bundle install
rails db:create db:migrate
rails server

The API will be available at http://localhost:3000.

Frontend Setup

cd job-aggregator-frontend
npm install
npm run dev

The frontend will be available at http://localhost:5173.

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API Endpoints

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/api/v1/jobs	List all scraped jobs
GET	/api/v1/jobs/:id	Get a single job
PATCH	/api/v1/jobs/:id	Update a job (e.g. visa_friendly flag)
POST	/api/v1/scrape	Trigger a fresh scrape

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How the Scraper Works

Hitting POST /api/v1/scrape calls JobScraper, which:

1. Fetches job listings from the RemoteOK API
2. Cleans each description (strips HTML, fixes encoding, removes spam)
3. Detects visa-friendliness via keyword matching on the description
4. Uses find_or_create_by(source_url:) to avoid duplicates

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Project Structure

job-aggregator/
├── app/
│   ├── controllers/api/v1/jobs_controller.rb
│   ├── models/job.rb
│   └── services/job_scraper.rb
├── config/
│   ├── routes.rb
│   └── initializers/cors.rb
└── db/
    └── migrate/

job-aggregator-frontend/
└── src/
    └── App.jsx

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Roadmap

• Add more job sources (Seek, LinkedIn, Indeed)
• Filter by location (Australia-specific roles)
• User accounts with saved jobs and application tracking
• Email alerts for new visa-friendly listings
• Scheduled scraping with cron/Sidekiq

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License

MIT