Hello,

I am new to the realty world but would like to build a website that searches MLS listings using PHP. I am not finding a lot of information on this and was wondering if anyone could help.

I'm not worried about building the search or results pages, just getting the MLS listings...is it a publicly available source?

Thanks!

Well, depending on how the MLS listings are setup, I'd recommend using JS/DOM [Ajax].

It can be done using PHP, and I'll give you a few tips:

PHP Code:

$fileurl = "http://www.siteurl.com/listing/ks/3943/";
$topcut = "some identifier [HTML comment, perhaps?]";
$bottomcut = "some identifier [HTML comment, perhaps?]";
$html = file( $fileurl );
$html = join("\n", $html); 


You can then use:

PHP Code:

list($dump, $data) = split( $topcut, $html );
list($data, $dump) = split( $bottomcut, $data );
$dataarray = split( "\n", $data );

foreach( $dataarray as $line )
{
} 


And for each pass, $line will contain the lines [all the way left to right] of the file/page that you "opened".

Nick

I don't believe it's publically available. I knew that openRealty (GPL real estate web app) had some form of MLS integration... that lead me to http://www.transparent-realestate.com/ and doing some reading there it seems that each 'region' may have its own MLS server (FTP?) and technically that MLS server data does not have a set format.

From what I can gather, you need access to each MLS' IDX or RETS server, first. Maybe it would pay to contact the site I mentioned and see if they can tell you how to get in contact with the various MLS' and get access...

More searching led me to http://www.idxbroker.com . That site might have what you need though it seems that unless you are an agent or broker, you may not be able to access that information by agreement.

As I understand it, if you are a paying member of the mls service in your region you will be given the access information to include listings on you pages.

I did some work for a friend and we were reproducing listings on a test site using nothing but html. I did have the access codes.

As for some the general public can use I am not aware of anything.

Thank you, I will investigate further knowing that...

Last I heard when my mother was doing real estate about 6 years ago was that MLS was locally run and that you had to go through a private connection to login for your own user information. I'm pretty sure there wasn't a standard for the data, but much of the data was implicitly standardized by conventional usage. Watch out in this field as the big MLS people WILL sue you if you breach into their "proprietary" information. MLS doesn't like competiton. Anyway, I believe that there's a nice sized fee as well - no idea what it was in my mom's day, but it's worth checking out. Finally, I believe that a year or so ago some big real estate companies were attempting to make the MLS data more easily available via online subscription, but you'd have to do some searching on there. Good luck - when I looked at their interfaces they seemed as if though they were creating a service for the dark ages and had a lot of distance to makeup before being anywhere close to what I'd call ready for market.