lith07 Posted November 7, 2010 Share Posted November 7, 2010 Hey guys,I'm a student web designer, and I was recently contacted by a realtor who needs a website done. I really need some side work, but I have never done some of the things hes asking for. Mainly, he wants to be able to do a MLS search on the site to display homes for sale in certain zip codes.How does this all work? Are there plugins that would need to be bought that access the MLS databases or what?What kind of knowledge would I need to know to be able to make a site like this? I know XHTML, CSS, and some PHP.Thanks for any help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boen_robot Posted November 7, 2010 Share Posted November 7, 2010 Looking at the MLS site (this is the one you meant, right? Not this one?), there are only two ways you can do this:1. Contact MLS, asking if they can provide you with a some kind of data driven ("feed" even) access to their database. Whether it's a SOAP or REST web service, direct SQL database access of some kind, that's for them to decide, and for you to follow. This will be the better approach, but will only work if they're willing to share their data.2. Screenscrap. Using a PHP extension like cURL or better yet - HTTP, send an HTTP request containing the thing to search for in the POST data, and scan the results with something like PHP's DOM extension (use loadHTML()... their XHTML is not well formed, so loadXML() is not going to work) to extract the results you need. This is a very fragile scenario, because any change to the MLS site will potentially break your script. It is also less efficient.[edit]Actually, if you try to contact them, you'll see they have this very question as their "FAQ" of sorts, and direct you to contact your client's local MLS system.[/edit] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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