Rendering a selection box for 50 states

Question

I was creating a Rails form where users have to enter their state. I ended up creating a select tag which is really, really ugly.

I'd like to think there's a better way of writing this.

<p>
        <%= f.label :state, "State:*" %></br>
          <%= f.select(:state, [['AL', 'AL'], ['AK', 'AK'], ['AZ', 'AZ'], ['AR', 'AR'], ['CA', 'CA'], ['CO', 'CO'], ['CT', 'CT'], ['DC', 'DC'], ['DE', 'DE'],
          ['FL', 'FL'], ['GA', 'GA'], ['HI', 'HI'], ['ID', 'ID'], ['IL', 'IL'], ['IN', 'IN'], ['IA', 'IA'], ['KS', 'KS'], ['KY', 'KY'], ['LA', 'LA'], ['ME', 'ME'],
          ['MD', 'MD'], ['MA', 'MA'], ['MI', 'MI'], ['MN', 'MN'], ['MS', 'MS'], ['MO', 'MO'], ['MT', 'MT'], ['NE', 'NE'], ['NV', 'NV'], ['NH', 'NH'], ['NJ', 'NJ'],
          ['NM', 'NM'], ['NC', 'NC'], ['ND', 'ND'], ['OH', 'OH'], ['OK', 'OK'], ['OR', 'OR'], ['PA', 'PA'], ['RI', 'RI'], ['SC', 'SC'], ['SD', 'SD'], ['TN', 'TN'],
          ['TX', 'TX'], ['UT', 'UT'], ['VT', 'VT'], ['VA', 'VA'], ['WA', 'WA'], ['WI', 'WI'], ['WV', 'WV'], ['WY', 'WY']]) %>
        </p>

Answer 1

you should move the states list outside of view, i.e. to model class.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  STATES = ['AL', 'AK', 'ID']
end

then in view:

<%= f.label(:state, "State:*") %></br>
<%= f.select(:state, User::STATES) %></br>

This will allow you to reuse states collection anywhere across the application and add easily validate if user hasn't modified the form manually.

Keeping states in User model is not necessary the best option but it's outside of this question scope

Answer 2

Adding to what rui said, it is usually nicer to present well-formatted data to the user; in this case, "Florida" instead of "FL". Store your STATES as a hash, using Hash#values for the display and Hash#keys for the internal logic.

Also, considering using Symbols for the Hash keys