What is RETS M.D.?
A RETS server does three things: it describes the data it holds, it delivers records matching that description, and it delivers photos and other objects attached to those records.
RETS M.D. is about the first of those, with small windows into the other two. Working out what a server actually offers is usually a one-time job at the start of an integration, and doing it by writing throwaway code is slower and less complete than reading it off a page. So: give it a login URL and credentials, and it asks the server what it has.
- Which RETS version and transactions the server supports, and how it authenticates
- Every resource and the classes inside it
- Every field in a class — type, length, whether it is searchable, required or part of the key index — with the lookup values behind any coded field
- Which object types (photos, documents) a resource carries
- A CSV export of any class's field definitions
All of it comes from PHRETS, the PHP RETS library that does the actual talking.