 | | |
|
codetrance
User
Nov 23, 2002, 1:51 PM
Post #1 of 15
(12079 views)
Shortcut
|
Hey All,
I know people have posted about this before, but I'd like to take a stab at a feature I'd like to see implemented:
Basically this is how I see an 'Open Homes' feature working:
In the admin you will be able to add an open house date (or dates) for each listing. Then when a user clicks into the 'open homes' page, they are able to see all the open homes for the current date (retrieved from the server), as well as for all upcoming dates. The listings for each date would be separated by a header with the particular day, but otherwise the listings would appear just like on the regular listings page...
I know you can already create a custom field for a listing with a date and then use the search function to do a search for 'open homes' on a aparticular date, but I'd really like people to just be able to click into the open homes page and see ALL upcoming open houses, vrs having to search for each date....
I'd really like to have this feature immediately, so if anybody wants to take a stab at it I'd be willing to pay for some custom coding if it is not too much.. : ) It doesn't seem like it would be too tough to implement...
Just my two cents,
I look forward to hearing back from you-
Roger Clapp
eg. codetrance
|
|
| |
|
Luke
Staff
/ Moderator
Nov 28, 2002, 2:30 PM
Post #2 of 15
(12049 views)
Shortcut
|
Hi Roger,
This could most likely be done using some JavaScript.
You could use a date field for entering in the Open House date, and then use JavaScript to grab the current date. A link to the search results of all open houses could be created by returning any open house listings that have an Open House date equal to or greater than the current date.
One thing, when entering in your date it will have to be entered in the following format, yyyymmdd.
Let me know if this would work for you and I'll have someone code some JavaScript to do this, for free. :)
Luke Holzken
Product Development
|
|
| |
|
codetrance
User
Dec 5, 2002, 7:56 PM
Post #3 of 15
(11996 views)
Shortcut
|
Thanks Luke that would be terrific...
I'm not sure if this is possible but perhaps I could create a field for the open house date which has the traditional format: mm/dd/yy (which would show up on the listings page and search results page), and then also have a field that is hidden in which one would enter the date needed for the javascript in the admin...?
Take Care,
Roger
|
|
| |
|
Benjamin
Staff
Dec 12, 2002, 1:16 PM
Post #4 of 15
(11959 views)
Shortcut
|
Hey Roger,
Just thought I'd let you know that I'm working on it!
Would this second date field you mentioned - the one with the traditional mm/dd/yy format - be used just for the sake of readability? Then yes - it would certainly be a way to go, though it seems a shame to have to type in the same date information twice for every open house.
An alternative would be to have a little javascript function parse the yyyymmdd formatted field, and display it in the traditional format instead. This would be quite simple to do, but the drawback is that any visitors without javascript would see the open house date in yyyymmdd format...
Perhaps your second field is the better way to go.
But I'll keep you updated on the open house script! 
Ben
interactivetools.com
|
|
| |
|
Benjamin
Staff
Dec 12, 2002, 4:47 PM
Post #5 of 15
(11951 views)
Shortcut
|
Hi, Roger -
All done! Let me give you a run-over of what I've done, what are its limitations, and how you can implement it on your own site. I've attached a couple of files for you to look at and use; I'll explain what they are and how they work in a bit. I've arranged the following under headings for clarity (and to help me organize my thoughts!)
What it does:
-------------
In broad terms, I've written a little script that allows you to have a separate 'Open House' page on your website. This page retrieves all listings that have open houses from the current day onwards, and displays them chronologically. (Note: if you're interested in only having, say, the next months open houses listed - post me back and I'll explain how to do it).
Limitations / Concerns:
----------------------
- First off, since it's written in javascript, a few things need to be taken into consideration. - First, it relies on the site visitor having a javascript-enabled browser. The vast majority of browsers out there are javascript-enabled, but you never want to create pages that are inaccessible to people no matter how small a group they may be. So, in the code, I've left a space where you can show something else for the minority who aren't running javascript.
- Second, it assumes that the timeclock on the person's computer is accurate. If, say, it's a week behind, it'll retrieve those open houses that have already come and gone.
But all considered, these concerns aren't that big a deal - I just felt obliged to mention them.
- In your specs, Roger, you suggested it would be nice for the results page to group the open houses by day, so that each day would have a heading with the date. This isn't possible, unfortunately. In the attached _open_house.html template file, I've rigged it so that every result has a banner with the date. But you can't have banners for the date groups of Open Houses. (Actually, there is an SSI solution - but it's inefficient and tricky to implement, so I won't go into it here.)
- In order to have your Open House page uniquely customized, you'll need the latest version of Realty Manager. This enables you to specify a template to retrieve results with. If you're not running the latest version, it will still function perfectly - but the look and feel of the page will be the same as any search results page. So if you want a distinct page with "OPEN HOUSE" in bold, red, flashing letters across the top, I'd recommend upgrading.
How to implement it:
--------------------
(1) First, you'll need to add two fields to your Listings Database. (Technically, you can get by with only doing ONE, but there are a couple of good reasons to do two. I'll spare you the explanation here). Call these fields something like: "1. Open House - yyyymmdd" and "2. Open House - mm/dd/yy". Make sure they're both set to "textfield" and both enabled.
As you can probably surmise, the first field is used to store the date of the open house in yyyymmdd format, and the second stores it in the standard mm/dd/yy format. For Each listing you create that you want to have an open house day, you'll have to fill in the date for both fields, in separate formats.
(2) Second, you'll want to put a "View Upcoming Open Houses!" link somewhere on your site. The attached file, demo_code.html contains the javascript code you'll need to use. Just copy everything between <script> and </noscript> into your document. You'll need to replace /enter/the/link/to/exec/directory/here/ to fit your directory setup. This has to point to your search.cgi script. Also, as noted previously, you may want to put some HTML between the <noscript> tags for those poor websurfers who don't have a javascript-enabled browser...
A few other things:
- you'll need to replace the number 30 in "lfield30_min" to refer to the listing field number which contains your yyyymmdd-formatted Open House date, and also the number 30 in "sort_order=30,123,forward". Likewise.
- If you're running an older version of Realty Manager - (see if "upgrade available" is written in red at the bottom of your Setup Options page to be sure) - you may also want to remove the line
+ "&template=_open_house.html"
which specifies a particular template file to draw the results. This functionality is only available the latest version.
(3) Lastly, upload the _open_house.html file into your /templates/ directory.
And hey presto!
I hope the above is relatively clear, but if you need clarification on anything just post!
Ben
interactivetools.com
(This post was edited by Benjamin on Dec 13, 2002, 10:12 AM)
|
|
Attachments:
|
_open_house.html
(11.0 KB)
|
|
|
demo_code.html
(0.77 KB)
|
|
| |
|
codetrance
User
Dec 15, 2002, 1:34 PM
Post #6 of 15
(11923 views)
Shortcut
|
Wow thanks Ben...talk about customer service!
You're instructions seem very straightforward, I'll give it a stab and let you know if there are any problems... though seems like it should work just fine.
Thanks again for taking the time to put this together, and hope you and yours have a nice holidays :)
Best Regards,
Roger Clapp
|
|
| |
|
ken707
User
Dec 17, 2002, 7:38 PM
Post #7 of 15
(11897 views)
Shortcut
|
Thats great Anyway to make it into an email subscription? so if a member wants a weekly email of openhouses in a county or city he/she will get an email listing them?
Also can this be automatically deleted by a set time determined by the property lister?
thanks again. it's just about what I needed.
|
|
| |
|
ocifuentes
Novice
Dec 2, 2004, 10:26 PM
Post #8 of 15
(10730 views)
Shortcut
|
Re: Open House Script Problems
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
I've installed this Open Houses script and I'm having a problem. I hope that someone here can guide me in the right direction.
The first issue is that I notice that the date string that JavaScript uses cannot have a zero before the day when the date is from the 1st to the 9th of the month. In other words, for December 2nd, 2004 the string needs to be 2004122 instead of 20041202 which was my first instinct to use. The issue with that is that the script reads that string as a whole number instead of an actual date. So if todays date is December 2nd 2004 the script will return '2004122'. Now, if your date string you entered in your listing was November 28th 1968 you would enter '19681128'.
19680228 is a larger number than 2004122, therefore the results WILL include the listing with the open house from 1968. That is a big problem!!!
The other problem is that the JavaScript returns a very incorrect date string when used in Mozilla Firefox ver 1.0.
For the date December 2nd, 2004, the JavaScript in Firefox is returning a value of 104122 (instead of 2004122 or 20041202). That causes every single open house date to be seen as a future date.
Testing for this two problems can be done at http://www.conciergerealtynj.com/openhouse.html
Has anyone run into this problems and/or have found fixes for this? Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Regards,
OCIFUENTES
Using Listing Manager 2.52
|
|
| |
|
Cliff
Staff
Dec 3, 2004, 12:05 PM
Post #9 of 15
(10717 views)
Shortcut
|
|
Re: [ocifuentes] Open House Script Problems
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
Hi ocifuentes,
Thanks for posting.
While we can't offer support for free add-ons, the good news is that all of this is open source, so if you need to modify the JavaScript so it can accept the zero padding you can certainly make those modifications.
I'm not sure why the zero padding isn't taking effect, but I'm sure that someone who is familiar with JavaScript will be able to get that sorted out for you.
A more simple solution would be to enable a field with a yes/no for the open house option, and then show only houses that have the yes option selected.
I wish I could have been of more helps, but if you need any more details just let me know
Regards,
Cliff Stefanuk - Customer Service Manager
support@interactivetools.com
|
|
| |
|
kcallana
User
May 14, 2006, 3:59 AM
Post #10 of 15
(7269 views)
Shortcut
|
I have got the Open House up and working but I can't get the date to show up on the results page and it seems to be posting all Open Houses even the ones that are gone by? The site I am working on is http://www.callcornerstone.com/indexx.html, then you will see the View Open Houses link in the left navigation.
Thanks! 
Kim Hutchinson
|
|
| |
|
MikeB
Staff
/ Moderator
May 14, 2006, 5:25 PM
Post #11 of 15
(7252 views)
Shortcut
|
Hi Kim,
Thanks for the post!
I think I might see the issue but I just wanted to double check one thing about how you have Listings Manager set up. Within the admin program, is lfield27 (the open house date field) set up to use values like this (for example, for May 18 2006):
20060518
If this is the case then the issue might be related to the JavaScript that's used on the template file as it looks like it's using this for today's date:
106514
When it should be using something like this:
20060514
If this sounds accurate as to what's happening and if you can post your template file, or just the JavaScript that you're using, I'll have a look at this to see if I can fix up the JavaScript for you.
I look forward to hearing from you Kim!
Cheers,
Mike Briggs - Product Specialist
support@interactivetools.com
Hire me!
Save time by getting our experts to help with your project. Template changes, advanced features, full integration, whatever you need. Whether you need one hour or fifty, get it done fast with Priority Consulting.
|
|
| |
|
kcallana
User
May 15, 2006, 3:03 AM
Post #12 of 15
(7244 views)
Shortcut
|
Thanks for such a quick response. Attached is my template file and the file that contains the javascript.
Thanks Again!
|
|
Attachments:
|
_open_house.html
(38.5 KB)
|
|
|
indexx.html
(23.5 KB)
|
|
| |
|
Donna
Staff
/ Moderator
May 15, 2006, 2:29 PM
Post #13 of 15
(7227 views)
Shortcut
|
Hi there,
It looks like one of the problems is that the "getYear" function doesn't work as expected in Firefox, and gives you the Y2k broken version -- so it was displaying 106 instead of 2006, as you would expect. However, there's a newer snippet you can use instead -- "getFullYear".
However, this doesn't help the fact that the month and day aren't zero-padded, as mentioned above. And alas, I'm not really much of a JavaScript programmer, so I wasn't able to find an easy solution for that.
What I can offer is a slightly different method that might be a little easier...
Take a look at this post I wrote last month about how to show only current listings:
http://www.interactivetools.com/iforum/P46276
Give that a try and see if that works for you instead. Note that it will only work on pages with a .shtml extension.
Or, if there's someone better with JavaScript who can get the date to output in a YYYYMMDD format, that would work as well. :)
Donna
Hire me!
Save time by getting our experts to help with your project. Template changes, advanced features, full integration, whatever you need. Whether you need one hour or fifty, get it done fast with Priority Consulting.
|
|
| |
|
Toledoh
User
May 7, 2007, 7:50 PM
Post #14 of 15
(5162 views)
Shortcut
|
Hi Guys,
Ive implemented this, and fixed the zero padding by adding;
if (month < 10) {
month = "0"+month;
}
if (day < 10) {
day = "0"+day;
}
My question is... how do I add multiple dates?
I can easily add the listing fields... but the search feature is only searching for items in "$lfieldx$"... know what I mean?
Cheers,
Tim
Tim Forrest
Toledoh Enterprises
|
|
| |
|
MikeB
Staff
/ Moderator
May 9, 2007, 9:43 AM
Post #15 of 15
(5148 views)
Shortcut
|
|
Re: [TF Solutions] Open Houses
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
Hi Tim,
Thanks for the post!
I've taken a quick look at the way the link is being populated for the Open House links and it doesn't seem like having additional dates is something that will work with this. Basically the search is looking for a minimum value in your "Open House Date" field right now and any listing that has a value in this field which is later than today's date will be displayed.
Listings Manager's search is done as an "AND" search. This means that if you added an additional field to the URL which brings up all of the open house listings, the only results that would come up would be listings that have an open house date listed in lfieldX AND lfieldY. Essentially any listing that has only one open house would no longer come up in your search results.
I hope this answers your question Tim!
Cheers,
Mike Briggs - Product Specialist
support@interactivetools.com
Hire me!
Save time by getting our experts to help with your project. Template changes, advanced features, full integration, whatever you need. Whether you need one hour or fifty, get it done fast with Priority Consulting.
|
|
| |
| | |
|
