[Rets-dev] GetObject questions

[Scott Gifford]

Hello,

I'm in the process of adding RETS 1.5 support to our existing real
estate search platform.  I have a few questions about handling
GetObject requests.

First, when multiple images are requested, how should a mix of
failures and successes be handled?  For example, if a user requests
"12345:1:99:2" and there's no image 99, or a user requests "12345:*"
and one of the images has a filesystem error?  Currently I'm
generating a multipart message, and for each object that cannot be
retrieved, I return a RETS error document for that part.  Is that what
most servers do, and will most clients understand it?

Second, is it possible to tell from the GetObject request which Class
the object is from?  For example, when I get a photo request, whether
it is for a ResidentialProperty listing, a LotsAndLand listing, etc.?
All of my image information is stored in seperate databases for each
of these classes, and without this information I'm not sure where to
look.

I could try creating a special KeyField to store the class and the MLS
number, but it's not clear to me how that will work.  The KeyField
seems to be a system name, so if a client requests standard fields,
how can it figure out which ID to use to get the image?  Do clients
generally support this properly?

Thanks!

----Scott.