THIS IS A GUIDANCE FOR VENDORS PROCESSING DATA FEEDS. IF YOU ARE AN AGENT WITH CONCERNS ABOUT YOUR SPECIFIC PHOTOS FOR A LISTING, PLEASE SEE THE SYSTEM RECOVERY GUIDE, SECTION 6. PHOTOS.
Vendor Guidance for Photo Processing
As a result of the system interruption at Rapattoni that started on August 8th, 2023, SFAR's MLS is currently unable to serve photos at the URLs advertised in the MEDIA tables for RETS and WebAPI. The URL structure, photo count and Listing.PictureChangeTimestamp values are correct, but the media at that location cannot be served on request.
Field Name:
Friendly Name System Name Standard Name
Because images are cached using Content Delivery Network (CDN) technologies and many vendor systems maintain shadow copies of media for serving to their customers and users, it is possible that you will have accurate photo data for listings that have had the information edited (such as Public Remarks, or certain feature checkboxes/options) where the photos have NOT been touched.
Recommendations:
- Avoid doing any type of "flush and reload" of images on listings that are not current, UNLESS the Listing.PictureChangeTimestamp shows that there are changes.
- When updating CURRENT listings, make sure you are checking the Listing.ModificationChangeStamp for changing the listing fields, but ONLY TRY TO DOWNLOAD PHOTO BINARY DATA (or change the photo reference URLs) if you also see a corresponding update to Listing.PictureChangeTimestamp.
- Try to avoid invalidating any caches of images you currently have.
Next Steps:
SFAR is working closely with Rapattoni on a strategy to repair this media server problem. That work must be prioritized below the full restoration of services for the MLS systems themselves, and any Rapattoni AMS system restoration activities that are still on-going.
When we have new information to share regarding image processing, we will update this page. Please consider bookmarking it, and refreshing it occasionally while we work on this critical piece.