CMS Made Simple Forums

This is just an general enquiry at the moment.

I am sure we have all seen a search facility on sites, especially property and holiday sites, where you can enter eg country, town, price range and so on for one search. Either multiple choice or by keyword.

A typical example is the search facility on www.costaverdeproperties.com which is multiple choice.

Any ideas please how this sort of facility can be implemented using CMSMS, if indeed it is not already in use?

Thanks in advance

Martin

I usually use Javascript and AJAXy like scripting to filter the results. For example, you can have a traditional search filed, show the results, and have filtering options. The initial results would have your default filtering set, e.g., distance=10 miles, bedrooms=3, bathrooms=2, etc.
The user can then filter the results from dropdown options for country, town, price range etc.

You will want to set class names in your HTML to give the javascript something hook into.

Some (not all) of my modules (CompanyDirectory, Products, CGBlog IIRC) allow advanced search out of the box.

But really.... there is no good 'one size fits all' solution. For a real estate site you should be using a module specialized in that data type that provides the capabilities you need.

This is because of things like:
a: time limited searches
b: range searches (price ranges, proximity searches)
c: different sorting options and problems
d: conversion of data types for sorting/filtering
i.e: if you have a 'priority' field, say 'high,medium,low' or even an integer 1,2,3... ,10,11,12,13
if that data is stored in the database in a 'generic module' that priority field has to have special behavior for proper sorting and searching. because '11' in a text field is < '2'. and if you do manage to sort properly on those fields, you're losing database performance due to casting etc.
e: query optimization
I could go on....

As an example.... the CompanyDirectory search has proximity capabilities in it. such that the user can get a lat/long using geolocate facilities, or postcode lookup, but has no built in price range stuff... because it's not a module for managing data that has a price.

That being said.... I have been working on a Property Listing module that will probably be released in the next month or so.

Or you could just use CGISimpleSmarty module.