AEBC Website

Phoenix website for the Association d'échanges belgo-chinois (AEBC). It presents the association, its institute and HSK centre, courses, teachers, administrators, news, and events. Editorial content is managed in a separate Strapi application.

Features

• French and English content and interface localization
• Strapi-backed institute, HSK, contact, and download pages
• LiveView listings and detail pages for courses, teachers, administrators, news, and events
• Course and teacher relationships
• Upcoming and archived events, sorted by start date
• Localized event dates in the Europe/Brussels time zone
• Latest news, latest events, and an embedded Google Calendar on the home page
• Responsive navigation with an institute submenu

Stack

• Elixir 1.14 or later
• Phoenix 1.7 and Phoenix LiveView
• Tailwind CSS and esbuild
• Tesla for Strapi HTTP requests
• Gettext for translations
• Tzdata for time-zone conversion
• Bandit HTTP server

The application does not use a local database. Strapi is its content store.

Requirements

• Elixir 1.14 or later
• A compatible Erlang/OTP release
• A Strapi server available at http://localhost:1337

Node.js is not required by the default asset workflow. Mix installs and runs the configured Tailwind and esbuild binaries.

Development

Install dependencies and build assets:

mix setup

Start the application:

mix phx.server

Or start it inside IEx:

iex -S mix phx.server

Open http://localhost:4000.

Development-only tools are available at:

• http://localhost:4000/dev/dashboard
• http://localhost:4000/dev/mailbox

If Strapi is unavailable, CMS-backed lists render empty and individual content pages cannot be loaded.

Strapi

The REST client uses this API base URL by default:

http://localhost:1337/api

Set STRAPI_API_URL to point the application at another Strapi instance. STRAPI_URL_PREFIX separately controls generated media URLs.

Collection Types

API name	Fields used by the website
courses	name, short, description, photo, teacher
teachers	name, description, photo, courses
administrators	name, description, photo
events	name, description, photo, date_start
posts	name, description, photo

date_start must contain an ISO 8601 date-time. The events page separates future and archived events using this field.

Single Types

The following localized single types must expose a main field containing the page HTML:

• home
• about
• institute
• hsk
• download
• contact-page

Enable French (fr) and English (en) localization for displayed content and grant public read access to the required Strapi types.

The repository contains an older Turnstile-protected contact form and a contacts submission client, but the current /contact route renders the contact-page single type instead.

Configuration

Development defaults are in config/config.exs. Production configuration is read from environment variables:

Variable	Required	Default	Purpose
SECRET_KEY_BASE	Yes	None	Signs and encrypts Phoenix data
PHX_SERVER	For releases	Unset	Enables the HTTP server when set
PHX_HOST	No	aebc.lambdao.org	Public application hostname
PORT	No	4000	HTTP listen port
STRAPI_API_URL	No	http://localhost:1337/api	Strapi REST API base URL
STRAPI_URL_PREFIX	No	Empty string	Prefix for Strapi media paths
TURNSTILE_SITE_KEY	No	Cloudflare test key	Dormant contact form site key
TURNSTILE_SECRET_KEY	No	Cloudflare test key	Dormant contact form secret
DNS_CLUSTER_QUERY	No	Unset	DNS query for node clustering

Generate a production secret with:

mix phx.gen.secret

Localization

French is the default locale; English is also supported. Locale selection is resolved in this order:

1. The locale query parameter
2. The persisted locale cookie
3. The browser Accept-Language header

For example:

http://localhost:4000/events?locale=en

The locale cookie is retained for ten days. Interface translations are under priv/gettext/, including the French month-name catalog. Editorial translations are managed in Strapi.

Update translation catalogs with:

mix gettext.extract --merge

Routes

Route	Description
/	Home page, latest content, and events calendar
/about	About AEBC
/institute	Institute information
/hsk	HSK centre
/download	Downloads
/contact	CMS-managed contact page
/courses	Course listing and detail pages
/teachers	Teacher listing and detail pages
/administrators	Administrator listing and detail pages
/events	Upcoming and archived events
/posts	News listing and detail pages

Unknown routes return the custom 404 page. In development, the dashboard and mailbox routes are registered before this catch-all.

Common Commands

# Compile
mix compile

# Run tests
mix test

# Format Elixir and HEEx
mix format

# Build development assets
mix assets.build

# Build and digest production assets
MIX_ENV=prod mix assets.deploy

Production

Build a release:

MIX_ENV=prod mix deps.get --only prod
MIX_ENV=prod mix compile
MIX_ENV=prod mix assets.deploy
MIX_ENV=prod mix release

Start it with:

PHX_SERVER=true \
SECRET_KEY_BASE="$(mix phx.gen.secret)" \
PHX_HOST=aebc.example.com \
STRAPI_API_URL=https://cms.example.com/api \
STRAPI_URL_PREFIX=https://cms.example.com \
_build/prod/rel/aebc/bin/aebc start

TLS is expected to terminate at a reverse proxy or hosting platform. See the Phoenix deployment guide for other deployment approaches.

Project Structure

assets/                              CSS, JavaScript, and asset configuration
config/                              Compile-time and runtime configuration
lib/aebc/institute.ex                Strapi REST client
lib/aebc_web/controllers/            CMS-backed page controllers
lib/aebc_web/live/                   Collection listing and detail LiveViews
lib/aebc_web/components/             Layouts and shared UI components
lib/aebc_web/helpers/date_helper.ex  Brussels time and localized date helpers
priv/gettext/                        Translation catalogs
priv/static/                         Static public files
test/                                ExUnit tests

Testing

The regular suite contains controller and error-rendering tests:

mix test

CMS integration tests run against a real test instance of the sibling straebc repository. They do not use mocks.

Start a dedicated Strapi instance from ../straebc, using a separate database:

cd ../straebc
PORT=1338 DATABASE_FILENAME=.tmp/test.db npm run develop

Configure its public role to read the required single and collection types, then populate and publish both French and English test content. Run the frontend contract tests with:

STRAPI_INTEGRATION=1 \
STRAPI_API_URL=http://localhost:1338/api \
mix test

The integration suite verifies all required single types and collections in both locales. It is excluded from a plain mix test run so normal development does not silently depend on whichever Strapi database happens to be running.