Thanks for the feedback, Wil... I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one crazy enough to deal with the Real Estate world.
I've been working with Real Estate sites for about 10 years and the last 4 or 5 I've been pulling in the data via FTP from two MLS's (whose data, of course, is completely different). And you're absolutely right about the problem with wrong database field definitions and the data that's supposed to *fit* into them! I had to correct a *lot* of problems with their published schema! I looked all over for awhile trying to find some good developer resources to help me understand what RETS was actually about on the data and processing level, but little was of any value and actually almost all information was addressed to MLS's. Are there any particular resources you would point me to for understanding RETS from a data and processing perspective? I gave up on the search and have been able to continue to access data through FTP, thankfully, but that window is coming to a close. Thanks for any info! Rick -----Original Message----- From: Wil Genovese [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2011 3:03 PM To: cf-talk Subject: Re: Anyone working with websites and RETS 2 data system for Real Estate? 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 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| 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:343737 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
