Is there a centralized list of country names that can be used for web drop down boxes (and validation) [closed]

Answer 1

There are many list of countries, check this wikipedia article; there you can find some lists like:

• ISO 3166-1 countries codes
• IOC country codes
• Alternative country names

And more...

Answer 2

Check out angrymonkeycloud.com/geography to get the full list of countries.

It's a free .Net client and so easy to start with, and it uses an API to retrieve values so you should always get the latest updates.

Answer 3

An answer to this question contains a useful link to a Github project that has lists in various formats and the script that produced them, making it easy to obtain updated versions.

Answer 4

I recommend pulling data out of the Unicode CLDR (Common Locale Data Repository), which include a professionally-maintained list of countries and country name data.

Grab the data from there once, and do updates once in a while; the CLDR data will come in a consistent format, so you won't need to fuss over it once it's part of your workflow.

Answer 5

No list is comprehensive.

"there's bound to be some random country that someone is from and isn't on my list"

If that was all there was to it, it would be simple.

There's no "world law" or "world constitution", so there's no single list of countries, republics, territories, protectorates, autonomous regions, independent governments, and disputed territories.

Indeed, it's not possible to come to an agreed-upon definition of "country" which would lead to a final list of country codes. The definition of "country" is politically charged. What, for example, is Tibet? Country or region of China? Northern Ireland? The Holy See?

Pick a list, and know that it's subject to some dispute.

You could, for example, use the IANA country code database: http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/

It's as good as any, and since it's part of the IANA, it has some standing as a standard. Further, it's pretty accessible as easy-to-parse web content.

Answer 6

This is probably way too late, but there's a web service that you can call that would theoretically allow you to automatically databind your controls: http://www.webservicex.net/country.asmx

May give you another approach and would be better than hard-coding a list yourself.