Amyst Design Company, web and print design and development services

One of the most common select fields we are tasked to create as developers are state and country fields; most of us have a library of code snippets on hand for just such a thing, like a ready-made select list. On a recent project I was tasked with creating an autocomplete field and my select list just wouldn’t cut it as the JQUERY function I was using required JSON input.

To solve the problem I created a couple PHP functions that I use to build the lists dynamically, the functions output a state or country list as either a PHP array, or a JSON encoded array.

In the examples below I removed the line breaks in the arrays, simply because I prefer it to a very long list I have to scroll through.

Feel free to use these in your own projects. If you do, let me know.

Code:

function list_states ( $mode = 'JSON' )
{
	$states = array('AL'=>'Alabama', 'AK'=>'Alaska', 'AZ'=>'Arizona', 'AR'=>'Arkansas', 'CA'=>'California', 'CO'=>'Colorado', 'CT'=>'Connecticut', 'DE'=>'Delaware', 'DC'=>'District Of Columbia', 'FL'=>'Florida', 'GA'=>'Georgia', 'HI'=>'Hawaii', 'ID'=>'Idaho', 'IL'=>'Illinois', 'IN'=>'Indiana', 'IA'=>'Iowa', 'KS'=>'Kansas', 'KY'=>'Kentucky', 'LA'=>'Louisiana', 'ME'=>'Maine', 'MD'=>'Maryland', 'MA'=>'Massachusetts', 'MI'=>'Michigan', 'MN'=>'Minnesota', 'MS'=>'Mississippi', 'MO'=>'Missouri', 'MT'=>'Montana', 'NE'=>'Nebraska', 'NV'=>'Nevada', 'NH'=>'New Hampshire', 'NJ'=>'New Jersey', 'NM'=>'New Mexico', 'NY'=>'New York', 'NC'=>'North Carolina', 'ND'=>'North Dakota', 'OH'=>'Ohio', 'OK'=>'Oklahoma', 'OR'=>'Oregon', 'PA'=>'Pennsylvania', 'RI'=>'Rhode Island', 'SC'=>'South Carolina', 'SD'=>'South Dakota', 'TN'=>'Tennessee', 'TX'=>'Texas','UT'=>'Utah', 'VT'=>'Vermont','VA'=>'Virginia', 'WA'=>'Washington','WV'=>'West Virginia', 'WI'=>'Wisconsin','WY'=>'Wyoming');
	switch ( $mode )
	{
		case 'JSON':
			return json_encode($states);
			break;
		case 'Array':
			return $states;
			break;
	}
}

function list_countries ( $mode = 'JSON' )
{
	$countries = array( 'Afghanistan', 'Albania', 'Algeria', 'Andorra', 'Angola', 'Antigua and Barbuda', 'Argentina', 'Armenia', 'Australia', 'Austria', 'Azerbaijan', 'Bahamas', 'Bahrain', 'Bangladesh', 'Barbados', 'Belarus', 'Belgium', 'Belize', 'Benin', 'Bhutan', 'Bolivia', 'Bosnia and Herzegovina', 'Botswana', 'Brazil', 'Brunei', 'Bulgaria', 'Burkina Faso', 'Burundi', 'Cambodia', 'Cameroon', 'Canada', 'Cape Verde', 'Central African Republic', 'Chad', 'Chile', 'China', 'Colombi', 'Comoros', 'Congo (Brazzaville)', 'Congo', 'Costa Rica', 'Cote d\'Ivoire', 'Croatia', 'Cuba', 'Cyprus', 'Czech Republic', 'Denmark', 'Djibouti', 'Dominica', 'Dominican Republic', 'East Timor (Timor Timur)', 'Ecuador', 'Egypt', 'El Salvador', 'Equatorial Guinea', 'Eritrea', 'Estonia', 'Ethiopia', 'Fiji', 'Finland', 'France', 'Gabon', 'Gambia, The', 'Georgia', 'Germany', 'Ghana', 'Greece', 'Grenada', 'Guatemala', 'Guinea', 'Guinea-Bissau', 'Guyana', 'Haiti', 'Honduras', 'Hungary', 'Iceland', 'India', 'Indonesia', 'Iran', 'Iraq', 'Ireland', 'Israel', 'Italy', 'Jamaica', 'Japan', 'Jordan', 'Kazakhstan', 'Kenya', 'Kiribati', 'Korea, North', 'Korea, South', 'Kuwait', 'Kyrgyzstan', 'Laos', 'Latvia', 'Lebanon', 'Lesotho', 'Liberia', 'Libya', 'Liechtenstein', 'Lithuania', 'Luxembourg', 'Macedonia', 'Madagascar', 'Malawi', 'Malaysia', 'Maldives', 'Mali', 'Malta', 'Marshall Islands', 'Mauritania', 'Mauritius', 'Mexico', 'Micronesia', 'Moldova', 'Monaco', 'Mongolia', 'Morocco', 'Mozambique', 'Myanmar', 'Namibia', 'Nauru', 'Nepa', 'Netherlands', 'New Zealand', 'Nicaragua', 'Niger', 'Nigeria', 'Norway', 'Oman', 'Pakistan', 'Palau', 'Panama', 'Papua New Guinea', 'Paraguay', 'Peru', 'Philippines', 'Poland', 'Portugal', 'Qatar', 'Romania', 'Russia', 'Rwanda', 'Saint Kitts and Nevis', 'Saint Lucia', 'Saint Vincent', 'Samoa', 'San Marino', 'Sao Tome and Principe', 'Saudi Arabia', 'Senegal', 'Serbia and Montenegro', 'Seychelles', 'Sierra Leone', 'Singapore', 'Slovakia', 'Slovenia', 'Solomon Islands', 'Somalia', 'South Africa', 'Spain', 'Sri Lanka', 'Sudan', 'Suriname', 'Swaziland', 'Sweden', 'Switzerland', 'Syria', 'Taiwan', 'Tajikistan', 'Tanzania', 'Thailand', 'Togo', 'Tonga', 'Trinidad and Tobago', 'Tunisia', 'Turkey', 'Turkmenistan', 'Tuvalu', 'Uganda', 'Ukraine', 'United Arab Emirates', 'United Kingdom', 'United States', 'Uruguay', 'Uzbekistan', 'Vanuatu', 'Vatican City', 'Venezuela', 'Vietnam', 'Yemen', 'Zambia', 'Zimbabwe');
	switch ( $mode )
	{
		case 'JSON':
			return json_encode($countries );
			break;
		case 'Array':
			return $countries ;
			break;
	}

}