Thread

Hi, This is my last questions - it looks increasingly like EE is the one to invest time in Learning. It has a rich set of features as far as I can tell.

I just want to make usre that ut can do this kind of thing.

A client wants a wbsite to Manage overseas property - they are based here in the UK and properties are in Europe.

They want to add Propertys With Country, Region, Price, Pool (and any other facilities) etc.

So they may have 4 countries that they have properties for sale in.

Do they create Countries and Regions seperately? Or are they created in the Content Editor for that particular ContentType - is the Content Type (not the correct terminolagy but one that I am used to with my current CMS) basically a Weblog? That I can customise with the necessary fields?

When the properties are then listed on the site (Paginated if possible?) can the customer search by country, region, Max Price, Pool etc and leave some options as “Any” if required.

Can the results then be displayed as Min Price to Max Price type of thing? I think I read this in another post so I figure it can.

Then when they find a Propery they want further information about a link takes them to a Form which is now filled in with the Property ID for them (and some of their details if they are logged in members perhaps).

They can the Submit an Info request.

Phew - hope that all makes some sense.

Thanks, Mark

Hi Mark,

Most of your requirement is easily achievable. The only thing I see that may cause a problem is the ordering of search results by a custom field, which EE cannot do ‘out of the box’. There is however a very small ‘hack’, detailed here on the ee wiki, to allow you to do this.

Thanks for the quick response to my questions - looking around the form I found this response to the ordering in someone elses questions:

4: Yes, you can sort (and pretty much any other weblog entries parameter) dynamically using post variables. So mocking up a simple form to target the same template as your entries tag will allow you to do this quite easily. Look at the dynamic_parameters parameter, where you list the parameters you wish to be dynamic.

So is that a way to do it rather than the “hack” which sounds ominous. I don’t need the results to come back sorted but just the head of each column - price in particular so that they are sorted in Ascending or Descending order. Is that possible? Is that what the response I found elsewhere referring to?

Cheers, M

Hi again mark, apologies for the delay.

That was actually myself who offered that advice, but it was in regards to sorting a weblog entries tag dynamically using post variables. While this advice still holds true, unfortunately it doesn’t apply to the search results tag, which is what you’ll be using for this particular page.

Agreed the hack does sound ominous, but it’s really not as technical as it first seems, and should be relatively easy to maintain should you decide to upgrade build/version in the future.

Hey, no need for apologies - grateful for your input.

Maybe I am not-understanding - or maybe conceptualising this wrong. I am not really Searching - I am really just filtering. I think.

I list ALL properties and then use a form to show only those properties that match particular criteria seelcted by the user from a Form. Or the form takes me to the Properties Section of the site and only those properties matching the criteria are displayed.

So if I define a Weblog as Properties and Select in my Form “Spain” it shows only those Properties that have a Location of “Spain” and are in the Properties section?

Does this change the way this can be handled? I currenlty use a CMS (4DSiteDesigner by Softidiom http://www.softidiom.com) which can do this but it is lacking some of the feature I would like and is not PHP based which I think makes it harder to do complex stuff (it can be done but I do not know Perl at all - PHP a little bit and expanding my knowledge).

Cheers, Mark

Hi Mark,

Unfortunately the weblog entries tag doesn’t support dynamic searching (filtering) by field, however there are a few feature requests that have yet to be honoured (c’mon paul/derek!) so it may be advisable to add your voice to those.

Let me give this some further thought, there must be a way!

Hmmm - Would a Gallery do the trick? An Image of the Property and Categories of course such as Country, Location etc - Then a Form (which dynamically populates the dropdown choices based on these - am I getting more complex?) to filter/search the galery - which shows all the associated Meta Data and then Links to a Contact Form as described at start of the post.

Just some thoughts without knowing EE that well (at all?).

Mark

Hi All,

Anybody else have thoughts on this? The options is a Propert Manager done in PHP which shows the property listing and integrates with the Content Managed Site for display only - anybody done anything similar in terms of integration.

Cheers, Mark

The gallery is more limited than the weblog tag- it’s definitely not the approach I’d go with.  What’s going to be tricky is figuring out what should go in as a custom field and what should go in as a category.  And whether the different countries should be different weblogs.  Which- I don’t see any need for that, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an option.

The glitch with EE is that the search doesn’t allow searching in a single field for a match.  I’d say search isn’t the way I’d go here.  I’d go with custom fields and/or custom categories.  And there are pros/cons to both the custom field approach and the category approach.  I’m not sure which I’d pick.  And I might end up handling some of it via the query module in addition to the weblog module.

But short answer?  I think it’s going to take getting in there and playing around to firm up the approach that’s going to be best for you.  I know there was a small real estate site in EE just mentioned- Surina Hart- might take a look at that one.  But it doesn’t look like it filters like you need.  PXLated has commented on EE and big Real Estate sites- though the threads are a bit old, and I think it’s more doable now.  But still- it’s going to take some thought on setting up your custom fields/categories.

Hi Robin,

Thanks for your thoughts - I used the term SEARCH incorrectly as it is more of a “Drill-Down” using Categories and the like.

I am searching the forums for anybody else doing something similar and will check the ones you list.

The Query module is the one that I had thought about (this is me prior to even playing with EE).

Can the Query results Populate a Form that the user submits for example.

If they Chose Spain will it return only the areas / regions that are in Spain - asuming I have set EE up properly.

More work as you say. The current CMS I use can sort of do this but it isn’t as XHTML friendly yet and a few other minor things like Forum Integration. It uses the concept of Domains which I think is the EE equivalent of a Weblog. Can Weblogs have a Parent? So that particular Weblog exists only Under A MASTER Weblog?

Categories: Could I set up Categories for Country and allow any Country to be added to the Countries Category or Seelected from Exsiting Categories if they exist? Again, That is how my curent CMS works and I thought that most would (but I may be wrong).

Yes - needs careful thought - Cheers, Mark

No- no mastr weblog- but sounds like categories fit your needs there- entries can be assigned to multiple categories and categories can have subcats, sub-subcats etc.

The query module just makes it easy to write your own queries.  Or really- display the results of your own queries.  And since you can pass info in the url and pull it out via segments- you have a lot of flexibility there for pulling any data you want.

So if you only wanted ‘Spain’ and have it in a custom field- you could pass ‘Spain’ in the url, pull out the segment, and do a query for all entries with Spain in that custom field.  BUT- you have to be familiar with SQL AND it’s not really great if you want to search for 3 bedroom houses in Spain- with a pool- and between 300-500,000.  You can see how it would get messy.

So- you have categories.  Weblogs can have more than one category group.  So- you might have a category group for ‘Location’- and top level cats of Spain, Italy, etc.  And as subcats under each- you could have cities.  And so it’s easy for folks to see everything in Spain and drill down to a specific city.  (You could even have subcats of neighborhoods w/in cities.)  And then- you could have another category group for Price- 100,000-200,000; 200-4,000 etc.  And a cat group for amenities.  Pool, ocean front- whatever.

Now- you can combine categories in a weblog tag- say ‘show me only the Spain category with a Pool- use the category parameter with an inclusive stack- BUT again, EE by default only picks one category out of the url.  So you’d need to get creative if you want to ‘filter down’.  I’ve done it easily with two categories.  But I can see how it could get tricky if you had 10 category groups or something.

Then- there’s Solspace’s EE Certified Tag Module- which might be a good way to handle amenities.

So…  You’ve got categories, you’ve got custom fields, you’ve got a keyword module.  All can be used in various ways and combinations to filter entries.  The tricky part will be to figure out the best combination for the particular site.  And I suspect that will take some playing around with it.  There isn’t going to be a ‘use ‘x’ tag for this’.  It’s doable- it’s almost always doable- but there are a lot of ways to go at it and any of them are likely to use some tweaking to get working exactly how you want.

Robin, That has moved things on somewhat.

I am okay with SQL. Not brilliant as I have used it only when I needed it but have done some complex Queries in the past. So it is possible to go that route.

I’ll think some more on it. But your explanation helped a lot.

Cheers, Mark

Okay - I have thought some more about it - and of course I came up with more - how does this work?

I am being dumb but once I get hooked into how things work I can generally figure it out.

So, in the above example (although it applies to everything) I get a list of Paginated results (say 10 a page) which show an Image and a Description of the property and Links to a Contact form which will also transmit (POST?) the Property ID to a Contact Form. I can also click a link to get more details and multiple images (say 8) of the Property I have selected - Summary List + Item Detail pattern. I then go back to my search results with the same “filtering” that has been previously applied and on the same page that I was on in my Paginated Results list.

Is that how it works or am I way of base?

Cheers, Mark

PS - I have been searching the site for days now and cannot find the best starting point for learning EE - hence the barrage of questions which is how I often learn. Is there a starting point (beyond the videos that were interesting but just scratched an itch).

Heh- I think part of the problem with getting a firm grip on how to do this is it’s pretty complex.  You’re jumping into the deep end of the pool.  Have you run through one of the trial options yet?  I’d do that first off- and read the Getting started docs, then walk through the Quick start tutorial.

That will help with the basics- but then it will take serious thought on setting the filters up.  Once you have the filter working so that you get your list of 10 entries?  (And I wouldn’t use post- most likely get/url segments because post is going to give you trouble with pagination.)  But once you have your list- the rest is easy.  The links will be to single entry pages- they can have a contact form or ‘tell-a-friend’ form, multiple pictures, expanded info- all that’s easy.  Having a ‘back to the prev. page’ is actually a bit trickier.  I’d probably use js/the tracker array.  Anyway- doable.  The biggie will be squaring away your filtering.

Thanks Robin,

I know I am jumping into the deep end - I am always getting the really trick stuff for some reason - and as usual no time to do it - hence the panic as I would like to find a route to take ASAP.

I think I will do as you suggest though and take it from there.

js/the tracker array? As opposed to the really simple [removed]history.go(-1)? Or is that what you mean? An option I guess and how it has been implemented by teh previous developer of the site I am looking at doing.

Thanks again,

Mark