Rick I missed the original post. I've had the fortune or mis-fortune of dealing with MLS data and websites for over 5 years ay my previous employer.
RETS - Real Estate Transaction Standard. Note - It's NOT standardized much. Using HTTP requests to an RETS server you can retrieve META data, data and objects (images) in XML format. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) has mandated all MLS's convert their data feeds to RETS. This has been an ongoing process for several years. The basic usage is this: Make an HTTP request for META data, this META data should inform you as to what data is available, then you make more META data requests to get full descriptions, table names, column names and data types for the data. Once you've acquired all the relevant META data and then built the DB tables based on that META data you can then start making HTTP requests for the actual data. This is in some form of XML. You will have to parse and clean and parse and clean the data in order to get it into the tables and columns as described by the META data. rant - All too frequently the RETS META data will describe a column as a certain type and length and then the data for that column if far longer. Ie. roomDesc VARCHAR(32) but the actual data is 100+ chars long. /rant There are many options already coded to retrieve RETS data. I've worked on a ColdFusion version for a client. It's a hard project to do IMHO. But doable. There will be a lot of trial and error. I also took a look at PHRETS and studied the HTTP calls that app used so I could figure out what HTTP calls to make when using CFHTTP. Looking at a working solution made learning RETS a lot easier because the RETS server docs are not the best IMHO. Take the time to work with it and experiment. I learned it by trial and error and to me that means it can be done :-) Wil Genovese Sr. Web Application Developer/ Systems Administrator CF Webtools www.cfwebtools.com [email protected] www.trunkful.com On Apr 14, 2011, at 1:36 PM, Rick Root wrote: > > No replies to this? So sad! > > I'm also looking for anyone that may have done a RETS 2 implementation in > CF. > > Rick > > > On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 12:56 PM, Rick Faircloth > <[email protected]>wrote: > >> >> One of the vendors from whom I've been getting a regular FTP >> feed for the last 3 years has just notified me that they are >> switching to RETS at the end of February. >> >> I've done some reading on RETS (especially 2.0) and have some >> basic understanding, but I'm trying to figure out *exactly* >> where I, as a web developer, fit into this paradigm. >> >> Is anyone working with RETS and, if so, would you care to share >> some perspective on what you're doing with it? >> >> This is basic education time from a web developer perspective. >> >> I've always gotten all the data via FTP, parsed it into database >> temp tables, run further "data refining" queries, uploaded the >> "clean" data to my production database and run my sites off the >> data from there. >> >> How does RETS change this? Do I have to now user web services >> to interact with RETS data? >> >> Thanks for any feedback (or resources on the web). I've searched >> and read a lot, but still need more clarification on how I fit in. >> >> Rick >> >> > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:343736 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
