OpenPMXLite HowTo

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OpenPMXLite HowTo for Web 2.0

Creating a real estate feed for Web 2.0 can be daunting at times, but we are going to hopefully show you how to create a feed to use on the PropBot.com system so your properties can be indexed daily as well as advertised through the PropBot.com network of websites.

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Deciding on what to Publish

Before you start working on your feed, you will need to determine which category your properties will go within these feeds. Using the OpenPMXLite Feeds, you will need to see if your properties are more Residential, Commercial Or Land. Once you determine this, find out if most of your properties are For Sale OR For Rent.

The Five Types of OpenPMXLite property categories are:

  • Residential For Sale (Abbreviated as 'rfs')
  • Residential For Rent (Abbreviated as 'rfr')
  • Commercial For Sale (Abbreviated as 'cfs')
  • Commercial For Lease (Abbreviated as 'cfl')
  • Land For Sale (Abbreviated as 'lfs')

Why are there so many different types of feeds? Simple. Different types of Real Estate is handled differently. For example, you can't compare a Residential Property with Land, because it is valued and appraised differently. The same thing goes with Commercial Real Estate vs. Residential Real Estate.

Determining the category is the first and essential step because it tells our script how to start processing your file. When you pass the category it will look similar to this: <opmxl:category>rfs</opmxl:category>

Within these feeds you can ONLY provide specific Property Types that match that type of feed. For example, in the Residential For Sale area, you cannot sell a Commercial Office Building. Therefore any commercial property types will be rejected within your Residential For Sale Feed.

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Materials You Will Need

To create your feed, you will need the following:

  1. A database of your properties (Oracle, MS-SQL, MySQL, PostGresQL)
  2. A simple text editor to modify your OpenPMXLite feed code
  3. A programming language like PHP, ASP, ColdFusion to make your feed current, and dynamic so you don't have to manually create it each day
  4. A compression program like bzip2 or gzip to compress the file. This is only needed if your file has more than 2000-5000+ properties.
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Starting Your OpenPMXLite Feed

To start your feed, you will need to make sure your feed is in correct RSS format, to do that, simply copy the sample code that we have provided on the OpenPMXLite page. It is already RSS v.2 compliant.

You will also need to verify your feed against FeedValidator.org which will help verify that your feed is RSS 2.0 compliant. If it is not compliant, we will not be able to parse your data.

Within the RSS item tags, you will need to include the code that brings in the data for your specific feed type. For example, in the Residential For Sale OpenPMXLite Example you will need to add this additional code within the <item> tags.


For each property of yours, you will need to have the property listed with in the <item> tags.

For example, the following is a COMPLETE feed for exactly 1 property listing. Of course, you do not want to list just one property, you want to list many. Therefore, you will need to create your script to loop for each property you are submitting and put it into the <item></item> tags as shown below. 

        <rss version='2.0' xmlns:opmxl='http://www.propbot.org'>
	<channel>
        <title>PropBot.com </title>
	<link>http://www.propbot.com</link>
	<description>PropBot Property Feed</description>
	<image>
		<title>PropBot.com</title>
			<url>http://www.propbot.com/images/logo1-horiz-sm.gif</url>
			<link>http://www.propbot.com</link>
	</image>
         <item>
	 <title>Centuryway</title>              
	 <link>http://www.propbot.com/propDisplay.php?resintid=5874</link>
	 <guid>http://www.propbot.com/O4K6XXO5874</guid> (Unique Id. Must be less than 255 characters)
	 <description>20678 centuryway is a Beautiful 3 bedroom home ....</description>
	 <pubDate>Tue, 13 Feb 2007 14:56:32 EST</pubDate>
          <opmxl:image1>http://www.propbot.com/image.php?id=47446&size=full</opmxl:image1> (full size photo please)
	  <opmxl:category>rfs</opmxl:category>
          <opmxl:uniqueId>5874</opmxl:uniqueId>
	  <opmxl:propertytype>Single Family Home/Detached</opmxl:propertytype> (See Property Type ID's page for details)
          <opmxl:status>Active</opmxl:status> (See Status Types page for details)
	  <opmxl:address>20678 Centuryway</opmxl:address>
	  <opmxl:locality>Maple Heights</opmxl:locality> (Town or City)
	  <opmxl:province>OH</opmxl:province> (State or Province)
          <opmxl:postalcode>44137</opmxl:postalcode>
	  <opmxl:price>900.00</opmxl:price> (decimal)
          <opmxl:pricetype>USD</opmxl:pricetype> (3 digit money code)
	  <opmxl:lotsize>32342</opmxl:lotsize> (decimal)
          <opmxl:lotsizetype>sqfeet</opmxl:lotsizetype>(acres, sqfeet, meters)
          <opmxl:interiorsize>2355</opmxl:interiorsize>(decimal)
          <opmxl:interiorsizetype>sqfeet</opmxl:interiorsizetype>(sqfeet,meters)
	  <opmxl:bedrooms>3</opmxl:bedrooms>
	  <opmxl:bathrooms>1</opmxl:bathrooms> (Decimals can be accepted as well ie - 2.5)
	  <opmxl:latitude>34.2342</opmxl:latitude>
	  <opmxl:longitude>-74.242</opmxl:longitude>
	  <opmxl:yearbuilt>1974</opmxl:yearbuilt>
          <opmxl:contactname>Jane Doe</opmxl:contactname>
          <opmxl:contactphone>1-234-567-8910</opmxl:contactphone>
          <opmxl:contactemail>jdoe@example.com</opmxl:contactemail>
          <opmxl:contactdomain>example.com</opmxl:contactdomain>(Must be fully qualified domain name. It must be either your domain (example.com) or your customers domain name (examplecustomer.com)
        </item>
       </channel>
       </rss>
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Using The OpenPMXLite Examples

Remember for each category we have an example for that property type, and will keep your properties from being miscategorized within our system.

YOU WANT YOUR PROPERTIES TO BE FOUND DON'T YOU!! Make sure they are categorized correctly, and they will be found.

Also, even though our system can technically bring in all your properties through one feed. We suggest you break them up into the five several feeds so that we can parse them independently of one another. If one property breaks one of your feeds, it won't affect the others.

Here are 5 different Examples of different types of feeds PropBot.com accepts.

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Validating Your OpenPMXLite Feed for Publishing

Once again, you will also need to verify your feed against FeedValidator.org which will help verify that your feed is RSS 2.0 compliant. If it is not compliant, we will not be able to parse your data.

After Feedvalidator says that your feed is valid, it is time to submit your feed to PropBot.com for inclusion to be indexed.

To submit your properties to PropBot.com, please click here. It will lead you through creating your account and leading you to the area to submit the URL for your feed.

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Big File Imports

Since we started with the OPMXL Feed to import, we have had several customers who have more than 20,000 properties wanting to process their properties daily. We can process these files if some of the following methods are taken into consideration so we can process them:

  1. Size Of Your File -
    Please compress your file using gzip or bzip2 so there are faster downloads between our servers and yours. If we see a file that ends in .gz or .bz2 we will uncompress it and start the processing. Don't underestimate Compression. We were able to compress a 510 Meg File down to 39 Megs. That is a 92% reduction in size.
  2. Creating a Delta Feed -
    Instead of providing us with ALL your properties, why don't you send just the changes? If you have a "Recently Updated" timestamp in your database, you can send us the recent changes for the past 14 days. The 14 days can be set at whatever you want, the higher the better. If we have issues with our script, have a bug, or lose connection with the Internet, we have 14 days since your last update to keep up with your property list. In the past, we might lose one day of property imports. But with 14 days, we can have a rollback that is safe.
  3. Creating Chunks of Properties - If you have several thousand properties, you can always create multiple feeds with <20000 properties per file. DO NOT TRY PUTTING MORE THAN 20,000 IN ONE FILE. The file will time out and your feed will be skipped over.
    If there is an issue with one of your property feeds, it won't affect the other property feeds of yours.
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Submitting Your OpenPMXLite Feed to PropBot.com

Once your feed has been submitted to PropBot.com for indexing, our system will look at your feed and email you if we have found errors within your feed. Don't worry, it is normal for a feed to not validate correctly within our system the first time.

Generally, you don't have a property mapped correctly with the Property Types or some other problem

One suggestion to turning the listing On and Off through the PropBot.com system is to change the Status Types field of your property listing.

For instance, if you want a property to be included within our system just keep the status field Active: <opmxl:status>Active</opmxl:status>

If you want the listing to be taken out of our search engine, you can mark it: <opmxl:status>Closed</opmxl:status> (See Status Types page for details)

Because there are several other Status Types, you may use those to reflect the current MLS status of this property listing.

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