This article is to serve as an introduction to using the ReSales-Online XML feeds and to provide the basic concept of a complex procedure to use our incremental XML feeds and basic steps to follow.
⚠️ We will only be discussing RESALES and RENTALS XML feeds. These two feeds contain all the shared properties on the network of agents.
In broad terms, an XML feed is a URL (looks like a long website link) that when run, will return raw property data (property type, details, image URLs, descriptions...etc) that you can download and use to display properties on your website.
Click here to see an example
Incremental XML feed - what does this mean?
In basic terms, this means that after the initial setup, only properties that have been added to the system or updated will be included in the next download.
Any property that has not been modified since the last download will be skipped and not included in the results of the next one.
Any property that is removed will be included in the next download as SOLD or OFF MARKET status - meaning it can be deleted from your database.
Any properties that have been modified or uploaded will be included in the next download as Available in the feed results.
If the same property reference already exists you can safely overwrite the existing information with the new.
If no previous record of this reference exists it can be considered as a new property.
A common question we receive is: “Why do I get 0 results in the feed (or only a small number)?”
The answer to this is because ReSales Online keeps track of which properties have already been downloaded on your side, if you see 0 results, this means that no properties have been updated or added since the last execution.
Basic Concept
Before discussing the procedure to follow, the general concept of using this incremental feed is to download the properties in smaller batches, (this is because there are thousands of properties to downloaded and too many at once will cause the connection to timeout and you will not receive them all successfully) ReSales-Online will keep track of which properties have been downloaded already. Later in this article will list the exact parameters to use, but the below example uses batches of 500 properties:
For example:
First execution will download properties 1 - 500
Second execution will download properties 501 - 1001
Third execution will download properties 1002 - 1502
...etc
Until you reach 0 results.
This means all properties have been downloaded.
Procedure
Below we will run through the basic procedure from how to request ReSales-Online to create a feed, where to locate it on your account, the first things to check and how to use parameters and download all the properties, plus some best practices.
How to request an XML feed
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Our chat icon can be found at the bottom-right corner of your ReSales-Online system, or on our web page. |
Start a chat with our Support team (you must be a ReSales Online account administrator) and request an incremental feed(s). We have separated For Sale and For Rent properties into two separate feeds:
RESALES - for sale properties only
RENTALS - for rental properties only
** Note: New Development properties can be included in the RESALES (for Sale) feed combined with second hand properties.
The Support team will create the feed on your account and reply once completed with further instructions.
The developer parameters are enabled by default for 5 working days, this means the feed can be download during office hours. After this you will need to schedule the feed to run outside of office hours.
Where to locate the feed once it has been created
The feed URL(s) are located in the “My Account” ⚙️ section of the account located in the upper right hand corner (next to the language flags) and in a tab labelled [Feeds]
You may see multiple feeds listed, we will focus on the RESALES and RENTALS labelled on the left of the screen, each corresponding feed URL will be next to it.
First things to check and prepare
If you copy and paste the feed in a browser, you should see some data appear after a few seconds, this is a quick test that the feed is working.
At the end of the URL is a Sandbox Parameter, “&Sandbox=true“ this allows you to safely check the feed with a limited number of properties. This needs to be removed later in the next step when you are ready to run the first execution.
Time to prepare the parameters we want to use
Parameters can be used to control in certain ways what information you want to include in the feed, we mentioned some earlier, but some others that may be useful are:
Parameter | Description |
&Language=x,y,z | Languages |
&FV=2 | Feed Version |
&PA=TRUE | Preferred Agents |
&n=xx | Number of results per execution |
⚠️ We have other parameters available, click here for a full list of available parameters.
To use all the parameters listed above in the URL, add them to the end of the feed URL like this:
https://examplefeedurl.com/...etc&Sandbox=TRUE&Language=1,2&FV=2&PA=True&n=500
Downloading all the properties for the first time
In the first execution (only the first) there 1 additional parameter required which will allow us to download ALL the properties, or, in other words: it resets the internal counter/pointer to 0 to allow you to perform a clean load: &i=True
⚠️ This parameter needs to be removed form the second and subsequent executions, if not, you will be downloading the same property data again and again.
The Sandbox parameter needs to be removed.
With the above list of parameters plus these the first execution would look something like this:
https://examplefeedurl.com/...etc&Language=1,2&FV=2&PA=True&n=500&i=True
The second and subsequent executions would look something like this:
https://examplefeedurl.com/...etc&Language=1,2&FV=2&PA=True&n=500
Continue running the feed until you get 0 results.
This means you have downloaded all the properties.
Schedule the feed to run automatically outside of office hours.
Usually feeds are scheduled to run every night after 7 PM and before 8 AM the following day.
Best Practices
Avoid sending the entire feed URL in messages.
Either to your developer, or to our support team, some email providers, messaging platforms or services will try generate a preview of the URL when sending it, this can trigger the internal counter to move and your website will be out of sync.
Instead, either break the URL by adding a space somewhere in the beginning, or leave it out all together and only send the parameter string.Wait until the XML feed has completed before running it again.
If you make the second execution before the previous one has completed, you will get an error message asking you to wait, this is common when not using the &N= parameter, or, if the value is set too high and the connection times out.
If ever you have any issues or your website becomes out of sync
Start a chat with our support team asking for the development parameters to be enabled.
Perform a clean load - click here to read the documentation, or, follow the basic Procedure above.