Since version 5 of the Resales Online API, there is a new features within the RO dashboard called "Filters".
These filters perform the task of allowing or restricting what your web site can have access to when your customers do a property search.
For example, if you definitely do not want to display properties under 150K, then in the api filter you will define the "From" field as 150000.
Likewise, if you definitely do not want to show "Caves", then you remove that option from the "Type" section and allow all other property types.
How Should I Configure the APi Filters?
Common sense would suggest to select only those items that you want to display on your site, however in reality this will cause issues if you need some flexibility for your types and locations, so the best rule is to select EVERYTHING and then remove those that you do not want to appear.
Here is an example of the property types
Same for locations, just select everything and then un check any of the ones you do not want to show.
How does this affect my website search fields?
Again, logic would suggest that you query the api and pull in the fields you want to search, however it's far easier to programme the website to only pass the fields you want to show.
For example, if you only want to make a search for Marbella properties, then you only need to pass x-x for Marbella and the api will give back properties matching x-x.
Likewise, if you wanted to make a search using parent areas and child sub areas, it will be better to build your own mappings and pass only those values to the api.
This will also save an api call to the server each time if you have the mappings sitting locally on your web site.
Below you can see a database table in our database so we can create the custom matrix/mappings of search types rather than rely on the ones provided by Resales Online.
Then on the website you only need to create an array to pull of this custom mapping and pass the values to the Resales Online api.
