Web fronted XML real estate website
Hi guys,
Most of the web development i do involves web fronted MySQL db interfaced through PHP scripts.
I've recently taken on a new project for a real estate company. They have an inhouse local system which generates an XML feed of each property information and uploads it along with images to a web server; also where a DTD file is stored.
I just wanted some advice on how best to approach applying a web front to this data.
Has anyone had any experience with this kind of technology?
Should we look at building somekind of parser that shoots the data into a DB or would i be better building an interface script.
Are there any "off the shelf" products which could save me time?
Thanks!
serpico
pr0gr4mm3r posted this at 02:39 — 30th October 2008.
He has: 1,502 posts
Joined: Sep 2006
Yeah, putting all that data into a database is your best option. The last real estate website I did included parsing 30,000+ listings from some massive CSV files. I wrote an importer script that feeds the data into a database every night, and then the website pulls from the database as needed.
I was not able to find a solution already available, but writing one wasn't a problem.
JeevesBond posted this at 12:08 — 30th October 2008.
He has: 3,956 posts
Joined: Jun 2002
Agreed with pr0gr4mm3r, parsing into a database is the best way of doing this.
There is an MLS listing module for Drupal, but it needs some love by the looks of things. It might provide you with some initial ideas on how to go about creating a solution to your problem though.
a Padded Cell our articles site!
serpico posted this at 23:21 — 30th October 2008.
They have: 121 posts
Joined: Aug 2008
Thanks guys. Going down this route will raise the issue of live data. At the moment when staff update details on their local system, they hit 'publish' which updates the XML feed on the server.
Should this then force an update of the DB or should this be done via a cron say every 24hrs as pr0gr4mm3r suggests.
pr0gr4mm3r, did you code that in php? If so, I'd be interested in taking a look at your code if that's ok?
serpico
Jennifer333 posted this at 15:24 — 29th October 2017.
They have: 5 posts
Joined: Oct 2017
I know this thread is old, but I want to share my experience as I've just finished building a real estate website. I used one of the website builders among those on http://www.webbuildersguide.com/website-builder-categories/real-estate-website-builders/ for this purpose. As they are created specially for this kind of sites and don't require any coding knowledge, it is easy to work with them. Also it should be mentioned, they are available for free. I hope this information will be useful for someone!
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