Trent Richardson
Over the last few weeks I have stuggled with a realestate website. All went well except for that one thing we all try to put off until last on any realestate based website, MLS. Well it turns out its not so bad with RETS after all thanks to VieleRETS.
What is RETS? RETS is an XML based solution compared to having to FTP. You can send your search request and in return it sends you back a feed with the results. There are two ways to retrieve the listings, either on the fly(with Retriever), or by downloading them with VieleRETS. In this series I’m going to walk you through how I was able to download my own feed very easily to my database. Once its in the database we all know how to handle it from there.
How VieleRETS is Organized
- Sources: The connections to your RETS service. Each connection can only retrieve one class type(Residential, Commercial, etc..), but you can have multiple sources(One for each of these)
- Targets: Where you want a feed to be stored(CSV, XML, Database, Open Realty), we will create a Database target.
- Extracts: Ties together Sources and targets. In this series we will create an Extract for each Source, mapping it to a Target database. These extracts can then be executed from the command line to download your listings.
Preparation for Part 2
Another thing you have to get over is the fact VieleRETS looks a little old, but don’t let that fool you as it is a regularly updated project that works very well. In part two we will create our Souces. In preparation you should have your connection information handy. You should have atleast a username, password and url. Also it will be useful to have your RETS version. This tutorial covers RETS 1.5. If you don’t have this information you might can visit your url in the web browser, enter your username and login and it spit out your basic connection info.
- RETS Retrieval with PHP and VieleRETS: Part 1, Introduction
- RETS Retrieval with PHP and VieleRETS: Part 2, Creating a Source
- RETS Retrieval with PHP and VieleRETS: Part 3, Creating a Target
- RETS Retrieval with PHP and VieleRETS: Part 4, Creating an Extract
- RETS Retrieval with PHP and VieleRETS: Part 5, Executing the Batch
- RETS Retrieval with PHP and VieleRETS: Part 6, Creating a Cron Job
Related posts:
20 Responses
Trent’s Blog » RETS Retrieval with PHP and VieleRETS: Part 5
07|Feb|2008[...] RETS Retrieval with PHP and VieleRETS: Part 1, Introduction [...]
doug
17|Feb|2008Hi,
I’ve been trying to get this app to work for a while now. i’m going to follow your intructions and see if it helps. would you be available to answer a question or two at some point?
i am a programmer/developer who became a real estate agent a few months ago.
trent
18|Feb|2008I will help answer your questions to the best of my ability. This entire thing is like a dark mysterious cloud, so once I got it working I decided to post my notes. Good Luck!
doug
22|Feb|2008how can i get in touch with you?
Andrew
31|Dec|2008Has there been success or progress made in the use of this application?
trent
31|Dec|2008Hey Andrew,
Due to recent discovery of (in my opinion) more simple php classes and solutions, I would recommend either checking out
RETSBond (http://retsbond.com/)
or iCheck RETS Client (http://forums.rets.org/showthread.php?t=1220)
VieleRETS is too complicated to configure for the average user.
Andrew
13|Jan|2009Thanks for the reply, how about that retriever program linked form the first page of this blog entry.
Is that feasible?
Thanks a bunch!
trent
13|Jan|2009Both are pretty complex, I would still lean towards using a simpler solution as mentioned in #6:
http://retsbond.com/
OR
http://forums.rets.org/showthread.php?t=1220
Andrew
15|Jan|2009For the icheck rets, does that basically work like retriever or does it just pull listing information to my computer, not available for querying and displaying results on a webpage.
Thannks again!
Spunky844
trent
15|Jan|2009You would run it as a background program to download the listings into your database. Although I don’t think it supplies the database specific code, it will hand you the data and you can insert it into your database(which works well if you use a db other than mysql..) as the database work is the easy part :)
Steve
30|Jul|2009how do you install the .sh on the server? I have a purchased hosting option and once I extract the .tar on my mac, i have about 25 files, i then go to terminal and run the install.sh file and it creates a few empty folders including the batch_control_files then upload all the folders and files onto my server. Is this not correct? Thank you.
trent
30|Jul|2009If you ran the install.sh and it created some files and folders sounds like it ran appropriatly. I’ve not run the recent versions of the install so its hard to say if it installed correctly, though as long as it gave no errors it should be installed
trent
30|Jul|2009If I remember correctly you need to use the web interface once it’s uploaded to your server and create your fields and database tables. The web interface should guide you through this. However I know this interface has changed A LOT in more recent versions and I’m not familiar with it anymore.
RETS Retrieval with PHP and VieleRETS: Part 1 - Affordable Web Developer - Just another WordPress weblog on Affordable open source web development.
19|Oct|2009[...] post by trent and syndicated here by [...]
Tarpontech - Computer Repair - Web and Graphic Design - Cape Coral - Ft. Myers - Pine Island | VieleRETS automatically updating WP-Realty
18|May|2010[...] your RETS server) 2. How to install or configure WP-Realty For general VieleRETS setup information, Trent Richardson created a terrific blog post that I found invaluable when starting [...]
retsman@gmail.com
24|Jun|2010Hi, I agree that iCheck is a superior means to get the data But my problem is this. I am experienced web developer but new to wordpress.
I’m trying to find out what interface the ‘openrealty’ data is in? I think it should go [the listings] in the plugins/wprealty/ folder, but what should I put there? xml data? text data? and how does it tie into the mysql database?
I was going to give viele rets a shot, but the very first rets server I tried, it didn’t work with, and I know none of these clients hooks up to all rets servers without modification (sometimes heavy modification) but I already have a system with iCheck (have gotten it working on 4 types of rets servers, (9 different rets servers total ).
any suggestions?
retsman@gmail.com
24|Jun|2010I hate it when that happens, not more than 15 minutes later I got the viele rets to connect to the rets server I wanted.
[I take it back; viele rets, please be nice to me ---- fingers crossed , (makes sign of the cross)].
So it was actually faster to implement than iCheckRETS but this is after 2 straight years of rets experience. Just wanted to make that right.
Thanks again.
RETSMAN
sendil
25|Feb|2011hello trent how are you. Can you tell me how to download more than 10 images?
it’s very important reply me soon. pls and advance thanks
trent
25|Feb|2011Sendil,
I noticed you repsonded the same message on several posts, (even unrelated posts), be careful doing this is you will get marked as spam.
As for downloading more than 10 at the time you may have to use the offset and run multiple times starting at a different offset (1-10, then 11-20, then 21-30, etc..)
Carlos Sanchez
26|Jun|2011Thanks for a Great Posting, your VieleRets retrieval was key for me to get my VieleRets installation going.