Property Data Feed XML Spec

This page details the specification of an XML feed to send property information to Homesgofast.com

1. Getting started

Read through this document
Refer to the detailed notes
View the sample feed
Create your feed
Test your feed
Submit it to Homesgofast.com for final validation via your account area

2. Overview

Your XML feed should contain data for all the property listings you want to appear on  Homesgofast.com

You should have only one feed per advertiser account. We match the feed URL you give us to an advertiser account once we validate and approve the feed.

We cannot accept a feed URL that requires any manual intervention (such as clicking a “download” button) as our feed updates process is fully automated.

- Each property should be consistently and permanently identifiable to you by its reference, which must be an alphanumeric code that is unique to each property and stored permanently in the feed using the <ref> tag. This reference will be mapped to a unique Property ID on  Homesgofast.com

- Your feed must be a feed of all of your property data, not just data you want added or changed. Each time your feed is processed, it is automatically checked against your existing feed. Any properties not included in your feed will be deleted from Homesgofast.com

- A new record should be created in your feed whenever you want to add a new property to Homesgofast.com. This record will be automatically processed and included on our site.

- For all updated records the <date> tag in your feed should be updated. When the <date> tag changes, we will reprocess all of the information for that particular record and update our database with any changes.

- Any records you wish to delete should simply not be included in your feed and they will automatically be removed from our site.

- We take no responsibility for any of the content in your feed, including any errors or omissions that arise as a result of typographical errors or any other incorrect or missing information.

3. Guidelines & Conventions

Within your feed, you must ensure that new tags are coded to break onto new lines, otherwise we will not be able to process your feed. To do this, you need to us \n in the script that creates your XML output. When you view the XML output in a text editor, you should see each tag on a new line.

Please use the same method for forcing line breaks in the description text for each property, or alternati, ely you can use the UTF-8 numeric entity &#13;

Please refer to the detailed notes for an explanation of what tags to use, what they can contain and whether a tag is mandatory or optional. Within the detailed notes:

- XML tags look like this: <price>125000</price>
- Comments look like this: // alphanumeric optional

Tags can contain alpha, alphanumeric or numeric characters

All tags are either optional or mandatory.

Optional tags can be empty. This can be coded in one of four ways:
<bathrooms></bathrooms>
<bathrooms>0</bathrooms>
<bathrooms /> Self closing
Or alternatively, you can simply omit the tag from the record.

The date tag must be formatted as datetime: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS

All tags are case sensitive and must be in lower case - <date> is different to <Date>

Where developments are being added that have a variety of different units on them, we ask that you list the development itself only once and include the range of different types of units within that listing 

Example:
<units>
   <unit>
     <name> 1 bedroom flats</name>
     <price> 99240</price>
     <price_max> 146690</price_max>
     <floor_size> 30</floor_size>
     <floor_size_max> 42</floor_size_max>
   </unit>
   <unit>
     <name> 2 bedroom flats</name>
     <price> 150000</price>
     <price_max> </price_max>
     <floor_size> 50</floor_size>
     <floor_size_max> 60</floor_size_max>
   </unit>
   <unit>
     <name> Studio apartments</name>
     <price> 150000</price>
     <price_max>200000 </price_max>
     <floor_size> 50</floor_size>
     <floor_size_max> 60</floor_size_max>
   </unit>
</units>

If your feed is larger than 50MB, you need to break the feed file into multiple xml files. This is because processing large files eat up MEMORY while processing. We request you to break total properties into a chunk of maximum 50MB files . All the XML File names can be put together in a separate XML File. The name of XML file that holds URLs of other XML file should be index.xml, sample index file is given below.

Example:
<?xml?>
<index>
  <file>URL1</file>
  <file>URL2</file>
  <file>URL3</file>
  <file>URL4</file>
</index>

4. Outline of Feed Structure

To the right of this page is the structure of a full property record. Your data feed will contain multiple properties by repeating the structure enclosed by <property></property> for each individual listing.

When creating your feed, please refer to the detailed notes and the sample XML feed.

5. Geographical Data

Please refer to the GeoNames geographical database covers all countries and contains over eight million placenames that are available for download free of charge.
Adhering to this structure ensure your properties appear in the correct location on our site.
http://www.geonames.org/

6. Non Standard Feeds

All standard feeds will be processed free of charge. If a fee is non standard, it can be processed, but this will require the payment of a monthly processing fee, which could be as high as �250 depending on the amount of work needed to create the mapping interface.

7. About Character Encoding

Certain characters have predefined functions in XML and must be encoded with character encoding whenever they appear in a text string within your XML feed.

&lt; should be used the encode the less than sign (<)
&gt; - should be used the encode the greater than sign (>)
&amp; - should be used the encode the ampersand (&)
&apos; - should be used the encode the single quote or apostrophe (')
&quot; - should be used the encode the double quote (")
8. Testing the XML

To test the structure of your feed, open it in Firefox (not Internet Explorer).

If Firefox can display your feed structure, then it has passed the first test. If not, Firefox will give you the line number that contains the first error, as well as informing you of any basic character encoding problems contained within the feed.

The next test is to run the feed through an external XML validator, which can be found here:
http://validator.w3.org/detailed.html

Paste in the URL of your XML feed.

For Encoding and Doctype, please select “detect automatically”

If the validator generates a message that says “This page is well-formed XML!” then your code should be ok to proceed.

9. Feeds we will reject

Your feed will be completely rejected by TheMoveChannel.com if:

- Failed encoding or structural tests
- Company names, URLs or contact details are included within the content on our site
- Replacement “image not available” that includes your company name
- Any HTML formatting is included within text descriptions, aside from <p>,<br/>,<ul>,<ol> and <li>
- More than 10% of records do not have images
- Text descriptions use excessive capitalisation

10. Submitting a Feed For Validation

Provided your feed passes the XML tests and doesn’t have any features that will cause us to reject it, please open a new support ticket to advise us of the feed URL, along with technical contact details and the company name whose properties the feed contains.

We will then test the feed and provide you with a list of any changes that need to be made in order to make the feed compliant. Please ensure that you have read sections 7 and 8 above, and have tested the feed before you submit it.

11. Automating Property Updates

Once your feed has been approved, we will process it on a daily basis and this will happen overnight automatically.

When processing your feed, specific records will be excluded from Homesgofast.com website if any of the following problems arise with them:
- Missing any mandatory elements
- Dead images 
- Data classifications that do not match our schema
- Incorrect location hierarchy
- Incomplete description
- Excessive capitalisation
- Prices that fall outside the normal threshold

You can edit these elements manually using the online administration system and the on-page validation will ensure that you cannot submit these records to go live until all the necessary changes have been made.

12. Making Manual Changes

If you urgently need to update prices, images, text or simply need to remove a property, you can access all your listings via the online administration system. It is important that you update your own property management system to reflect these changes, to ensure that any new feeds are amended with the new data.

13. Investment Properties

The complex logic, validation and quality control requirement for an investment property on  Homesgofast.com is such that these properties cannot be fully added automatically. If you wish to include your properties within our investment newsletter or the investment sections, you will need to first add the properties via your feed and then manually edit the investment information for your chosen properties, once they have been added to our site. You can do this via our online administration system – please contact your account manager for further information.

14. Getting Help

Please use our support ticket system and one of our technical staff will be able to assist you.

<node> - optional 

<?xml?>
<root>
<homesgofast>
<feed_version>2</feed_version>
</homesgofast>

<property>

  <ref></ref>
  <name></name>
  <date></date>
  <price></price>

  <price_max></price_max>
  <currency></currency>

  <type>
    <en></en><!--From table given below-->
  </type>

  <country></country>
  <location1></location1>

  <location2></location2>
  <location3></location3>
  <postcode></postcode>
  <latitude></latitude>
  <longitude></longitude>
  <zoom></zoom>

  <beds></beds>

  <beds_max></beds_max>
  <baths></baths>
  <key_selling_points>
    <key_selling_point>
    </key_selling_point>
  </key_selling_points>

  <short_desc>
    <en>
    </en>  
  </short_desc>
  <full_desc>
    <en>
    </en>
  </full_desc>

  <images>
    <image id='Small Image'>
      <url></url>
      <title></title>
    </image>
    <image id='Large Image'>
    <!--minimum width should be 500px-->
      <url></url>
      <title></title>
    </image>

    <image id='1-10'>
    <!--minimum width should be 500px-->
      <url></url>
      <title></title>
    </image>

  </images>
  <units>
    <unit>
      <name></name>
      <price></price>
      <price_max></price_max>
      <floor_size></floor_size>
      <floor_size_max></floor_size_max>
    </unit>
  </units>

  <delivery_date></delivery_date>

</property>

</root>
Property Types

Property type can be ONE of "Type" or "Sub Type" from table given below. 
Important: 
-Type can't be selected from "Sector" column 
-Please select "Sub Type" if it is available 
TYPE
SUB TYPE
House
Barn
Beach House
Bungalow
Caravan
Castle
Cave
Chalet
Chateau
Church
Cottage
Country Estate
Farmhouse
Finca
Lighthouse
Lodge
Log Cabin
Manor House
Mansion
Mill
Motor Home
Palace
Park Home
Prefabricated House
Private Island
Ranch
Riad
Ruin
Self Build
Stately Home
Tower
Townhouse
Trailer
Trulli
Villa
Windmill

Apartment
Condo
Flat
Loft
Maisonette
Penthouse
Rooms
Studio
Workshop

Land
Allotment
Building Plot
Development Land
Farmland
Forest
Land Subdivision
Land With Planning
Mine
Oil Field
Private Beach
Raw Land
Vineyard
Zoned Land

Commercial
Bar
Bed and Breakfast
Boatyard
Building for Redevelopment
Bulk Buy Residential
Business For Sale
Cafe
Car Park
Car Parking
Commercial Portfolio
Factory
Farming and Agriculture
Garage
Golf Course
Guest House
Hotel
Industrial
Leisure Property
Live Work
Marina
Medical Facility
Mixed Use
Office Building
Office Space
Petrol Station
Public House
Residential Portfolio
Restaurant
Retail
Serviced office
Shop
Stableyard
Storage
Warehouse
Whole Development

Room