Have an exposed filter on a view be a list of US states

Question

I would think this would be a pretty common thing, but I have a job board that I am exposing for users to search on. They can search by city and/or state so I exposed some filters on my view for city and state. Now, of course, plain text boxes work fine out of the box if I want the user to freely type in a state, but I really want it to be a dropdown of states. I see that I can do a "Grouped Filter" which allows me to specify some key|value pairs, but do I REALLY need to enter in all 50 states manually? Is there a way programatically to have the dropdown be a list of states? I also noticed that even if I DO specify a few values to test with like AZ|AZ, CA|CA, NV|NV, when I go to use the exposed filters instead of the URL being something like this:

http://sandbox/job-board?city=&state=AZ

it actually uses:

http://sandbox/job-board?city=&state=1

where there is a "1" instead of "AZ". I would really like to be able to pass "AZ" not a 1 in the URL because if I have other apps posting to the job search page, I don't want to have to map ID's to actual state values, I just want to pass in the state code. What's the best way to go about this?

THANKS

Answer 1

Thanks guys. I don't think the Address Field module will work for me because the field I am exposing is not an address field. It is a field from a custom table, so I don't think the Address field module would pick that up. Anyway, I ended up just doing a form alter on the exposed filter form swapping out the text box with a drop down of states and it works great:

/*
*    hook_form_alter()
*/
function bullhorn_form_alter(&$form, $form_state, $form_id) {

  // Check form is exposed filter, object is a view and view name
  if ($form_id == 'views_exposed_form' && is_object($form_state['view']) && $form_state['view']->name=='job_board' ) {

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

    $form['state'] = array(
      '#type' => 'select',
      '#options' => $states,
    );

  }
}

Answer 2

AL|AL
AK|AK
AS|AS
AZ|AZ
AR|AR
CA|CA
CO|CO
CT|CT
DE|DE
DC|DC
FM|FM
FL|FL
GA|GA
GU|GU
HI|HI
ID|ID
IL|IL
IN|IN
IA|IA
KS|KS
KY|KY
LA|LA
ME|ME
MH|MH
MD|MD
MA|MA
MI|MI
MN|MN
MS|MS
MO|MO
MT|MT
NE|NE
NV|NV
NH|NH
NJ|NJ
NM|NM
NY|NY
NC|NC
ND|ND
MP|MP
OH|OH
OK|OK
OR|OR
PW|PW
PA|PA
PR|PR
RI|RI
SC|SC
SD|SD
TN|TN
TX|TX
UT|UT
VT|VT
VI|VI
VA|VA
WA|WA
WV|WV
WI|WI
WY|WY
AE|AE
AA|AA
AP|AP