Geocoding MLS data
The data provided by REIL does not contain geocoding which means that I will have to do this myself. I am using Perl to download and build the data so I have designed a Perl process to bulk geocode each of the addresses. I designed a caching system so that I only need to do any one lookup one time.
Login to reil.com
REIL.com uses digest authentication. I am using perl to pull down the data so first I need to login to the reil.com server with proper authorization. I was unable to find a lot of documentation on how this process works. The usual method for exposing web services is via SOAP, but this service uses HTTP Digest Authentication. I have not used it much but it appears that the main benefit is not sending the password in clear text over a non-ssl connection. It is not as secure as SSL by any means but is better than a clear text transmission of the password.
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Access to MLS reil.com
I have been working on a project to pull information from a local MLS service, reil.com. They provide MLS data for the San francisco Bay area such as Palo Alto and Menlo Park. I am building websites for some local Real Estate Agents that display current MLS properties in a google map. The data will be pulled from reil.com to a local database and syncronized at various periods throughout the day. The information will be displayed on a googlemap. The data will appear based on the current proximity of the map. So when the user drags the map the system will re-search the database give the new boundries.
Working with the Zillow API
We recently completed a website that displays property estimates using the data from http://zillow.com:
http://www.estimatepropertyvalues.com
Zillow provides excellent documentation on how to utilize their API’s which made is easy to configure. This application pulls zillow data in real time and displays it alongside and within a google map. Each plot on the map holds a tabbed view of information including property details and charts. The application is designed to operate using mostly ajax calls for faster responses. The main challenge here was how to display a large quantity of data in a clean, uncluttered fasion.