Posted by Jeff North on 05/25/07 23:06

On Fri, 25 May 2007 19:27:51 +0100, in comp.lang.php Toby A Inkster
<usenet200703@tobyinkster.co.uk>
<7emji4-pom.ln1@ophelia.g5n.co.uk> wrote:

>| Jeff North wrote:
>|
>| > Initially the client only wants state by state franchisees but I can
>| > see that this could eventually be scaled to districts/areas.
>| >
>| > To compound matters, my client is wanting this to work in any country.
>|
>| Firstly, not all countries have "states" -- certainly the UK doesn't. Some
>| countries have regional units similar to states -- e.g. France has
>| "departments". Other countries (small ones mainly) don't have any regional
>| subdivisions.

I'm well aware of this.

>| For encoding administrative areas in a database, I'd recommend using
>| ISO 8859, which provides two character codes for every country. Most
>| countries then define subcodes within ISO 8859 for regions within their
>| country.
>|
>| For example, here are a few codes:
>|
>| Australia: AU
>| United Kingdom: GB
>| Brighton & Hove: GB-BNH
>| New South Wales: AU-NSW
>|
>| There is more information, and a full list of ISO codes at:
>| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8859-1
>|
>| However, the US local codes only go down to state level, so if you think
>| you're likely to need to subdivide further than ISO 8859 allows, I'd
>| advice encoding location in two or more fields -- one or more to contain
>| the ISO code, and one to contain a more specific locale *within* the area
>| of that ISO code.

hmmmm food for thought :-)

>| Some places might have some sort of standards for how to encode these
>| districts, but you'll mostly find that they don't. Postal codes are an
>| option, but are probably too specific for your needs. (One franchisee per
>| postal code?

Doubt it and very impractical from a business point of view.

>| This might be OK in Australia, where postal codes cover
>| fairly large populations,

Where did you get this silly idea from? Our major cities do have
sub-divisions called suburbs. Maybe you've heard of them.

>| but less so for the UK, where they tend to cover
>| a dozen or so buildings.)
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