Question

I am building a real estate website. I have a table for properties (i.e. ‘houses’), a table for pictures, a table for features, etc. So each property’s data comes from three, not only one table.

I need to provide a function that retrieves requested property data depending on a search criteria, for example:

1. property of the week
2. featured properties
3. properties on offer
4. the simple search

I have multiple drop-down lists for selecting country, region, area, bedrooms, price range, type, etc.

I already built many functions each dealing with one of the above cases, but I was wondering, if there was any other way of building one flexible mechanism that will retrieves whatever you want in a smart way, I mean one function that works for all cases?

I know my question is kind of vague and too broad, but bear with me please.

Thanks in advance.

PS: I am using ASP.NET 3.5, VB.NET, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express, SQL Server 2005 Express

Answer 1

I think you’re looking to build an Advanced Search functionality that integrates with the default/simple search provided.

Why not build a single stored procedure to encapsulate all possible types of searches by specifying default values of parameters that are not passed.

In this manner, the simple search would be using all parameter defaults. Whenever any criteria is provided to narrow the search, the passed parameter value will be used by the Stored Procedure.