Countries is a collection of all sorts of useful information for every country in the ISO 3166 standard. It contains info for the following standards ISO3166-1(countries), ISO3166-2(states/subdivisions), ISO4217(currency) and E.164(phone numbers). The gem also adds a country_select helper. I will add any country based data I can get access to. I hope this to be a repository for all country based information.

gem install countries

If you’re in Rails 2.3 or earlier, place this in your environment.rb:

config.gem 'countries'

Or you can install via bundler Gemfile if you are using Rails 3:

gem 'countries'

Or you can install via bundler Gemfile with using only ISO3166::Country (no Country class):

gem 'countries', :require => 'iso3166'

As a bonus if you add the gem to a rails project it automatically gives you a country_select form helper. Unlike the normal country select it will store the alpha2 country code not the country name.

Note that Country class still exist by default. (is inherited from ISO3166::Country to keep backward compatibility).

Simply load a new country object using Country.new(alpha2) or the shortcut Country[alpha2]. An example works best.

c = Country.new('US')
c = Country['US']

You can lookup a country or an array of countries using any of the data attributes via the find_country_by_attribute dynamic methods:

c = Country.find_country_by_name('united states')
list = Country.find_all_countries_by_region('Americas')
c = Country.find_country_by_alpha3('can')

For a list of available attributes please see ISO3166::Country::AttrReaders. Note: searches are case insensitive.

Identification Codes

c.number #=> "840"
c.alpha2 #=> "US"
c.alpha3 #=> "USA"

Names

c.name #=> "United States"
c.names #=> ["United States of America", "Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika", "États-Unis", "Estados Unidos"]

Subdivisions & States

c.subdivisions #=> {"CO" => {:name => "Colorado", :names => "Colorado"}, ... }
c.states #=> {"CO" => {:name => "Colorado", :names => "Colorado"}, ... }

Location

c.latitude #=> "38 00 N"
c.longitude #=> "97 00 W"

c.region #=> "Americas"
c.subregion #=> "Northern America"

Telephone Routing (E164)

c.country_code #=> "1"
c.national_destination_code_lengths #=> 3
c.national_number_lengths #=> 10
c.international_prefix #=> "011"
c.national_prefix #=> "1"

Countries now uses the Currencies gem. What this means is you now get back a Currency object that gives you access to all the currency information. It acts the same as a hash so the same ['name'] methods still work.

c.currency['code'] #=> 'USD'
c.currency['name'] #=> 'Dollars'
c.currency['symbol'] #=> '$'

If a country has an alternate currency it can be accessed via the alt_currency method and will also return a Currency object.

Since we are using the Currencies gem we get a bonus ExchangeBank that can be used with the Money gem. It auto loads exchange rates from Yahoo Finance.

Money.default_bank = Currency::ExchangeBank.new
Money.us_dollar(100).exchange_to("CAD")  # => Money.new(124, "CAD")

A template for formatting addresses is available through the address_format method. These templates are compatible with the Liquid template system.

c.address_format #=> "{{recipient}}\n{{street}}\n{{city}} {{region}} {{postalcode}}\n{{country}}"

• Mongoid support
• State select
• Class methods for looking up information
• Default country
• Exclude countries
• Preferred countries
• Whitelist countries

• Fork the project.
• Make your feature addition or bug fix.
• Add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
• Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
• Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

Copyright (c) 2011 hexorx. See LICENSE for details.