Rails how should I store city and state for a customer

Question

I have a Ruby on Rails app with a Customer model that needs a related city/state. Adding a string column for the state could cause my coworkers to miss-type the location and I would have a harder time finding all the customers in a given city. Creating a model for a city that would only include a name seems excessive.

What is the correct way of storing this so that I can find my customers by city later on?

Answer 1

If misstyping is a problem, keep the column as text, but have it as a select instead of an input tag.

You can also validate that column to see it matches the list of states

For the list you can have it in a constant to keep it accessible like

class User

    STATES = Array[ ["AK", "Alaska"], 
                    ["AL", "Alabama"], 
                    ["AR", "Arkansas"], 
                    ["AS", "American Samoa"], 
                    ["AZ", "Arizona"], 
                    ["CA", "California"], 
                    ["CO", "Colorado"], 
                    ["CT", "Connecticut"], 
                    ["DC", "District of Columbia"], 
                    ["DE", "Delaware"], 
                    ["FL", "Florida"], 
                    ["GA", "Georgia"], 
                    ["GU", "Guam"], 
                    ["HI", "Hawaii"], 
                    ["IA", "Iowa"], 
                    ["ID", "Idaho"], 
                    ["IL", "Illinois"], 
                    ["IN", "Indiana"], 
                    ["KS", "Kansas"], 
                    ["KY", "Kentucky"], 
                    ["LA", "Louisiana"], 
                    ["MA", "Massachusetts"], 
                    ["MD", "Maryland"], 
                    ["ME", "Maine"], 
                    ["MI", "Michigan"], 
                    ["MN", "Minnesota"], 
                    ["MO", "Missouri"], 
                    ["MS", "Mississippi"], 
                    ["MT", "Montana"], 
                    ["NC", "North Carolina"], 
                    ["ND", "North Dakota"], 
                    ["NE", "Nebraska"], 
                    ["NH", "New Hampshire"], 
                    ["NJ", "New Jersey"], 
                    ["NM", "New Mexico"], 
                    ["NV", "Nevada"], 
                    ["NY", "New York"], 
                    ["OH", "Ohio"], 
                    ["OK", "Oklahoma"], 
                    ["OR", "Oregon"], 
                    ["PA", "Pennsylvania"], 
                    ["PR", "Puerto Rico"], 
                    ["RI", "Rhode Island"], 
                    ["SC", "South Carolina"], 
                    ["SD", "South Dakota"], 
                    ["TN", "Tennessee"], 
                    ["TX", "Texas"], 
                    ["UT", "Utah"], 
                    ["VA", "Virginia"], 
                    ["VI", "Virgin Islands"], 
                    ["VT", "Vermont"], 
                    ["WA", "Washington"], 
                    ["WI", "Wisconsin"], 
                    ["WV", "West Virginia"], 
                    ["WY", "Wyoming"] ]

...

end

and then access it via User::STATES

Answer 2

You don't say why you need this info, but (assuming this is US city/state) storing a ZIP code is more accurate - "city" + "state" is not guaranteed to be unique.