Getting a countries states/district names

[colinbes]

I don't know the correct terminology but I am looking for the subdivision names of countries - For example, the USA has States, South Africa has Provinces. Ideally this would be tied with country and not the states table.

I have a user profile page which is international and once user selects their Country I want the correct name for their States/Districts.

For example if USA then I want a "State" dropdown box for US' states, if South Africa I want to display "Province".

I see sites doing this so data must be somewhere :-).

Thanks!

[dosubot[bot]]

Hey @colinbes! I'm here to help you with any bugs, questions, or contributions you have. Let's tackle this together!

The countries-states-cities-database repository contains a data structure in the json/states.json file that includes subdivision names for each country, such as states for the USA and provinces for South Africa. Each entry in this file provides details like the state name, state code, country name, and country code ^[1].

To implement the feature you described, you can use this data to dynamically change the label of the dropdown based on the selected country. This way, when a user selects a country, you can display the appropriate term (e.g., "State" for the USA, "Province" for South Africa) and populate the dropdown with the relevant subdivisions.

To continue talking to Dosu, mention @dosu.

[colinbes]

@dosu as the states.json contains the type name it can only be determined after a state is selected - to use this I would have to 'guess' or just take index 0 and pull state type - not ideal, but doable.

Challenge is many of the "type" entries in states.json have null value.

[dosubot[bot]]

The states.json file indeed has many entries where the type field is null, which makes it challenging to determine the subdivision type directly from this file ^[1]. Unfortunately, the repository does not provide additional documentation or guidelines on how to handle these null values or infer subdivision types ^[2].

One approach you could consider is maintaining a separate mapping of countries to their common subdivision types (e.g., "State" for the USA, "Province" for South Africa) based on your application's needs. This mapping can be used to set the dropdown label when a country is selected, independent of the states.json data. This way, you won't need to rely on the type field being populated.

To continue talking to Dosu, mention @dosu.