Yes you should If you try to validate and format the input for all the countries you might get it all resolved before your retirement . but i doubt it.
You have to deal with countries that have different levels of government organisation and locality organisation,different phone number formats. And that's the least of your problems. For example, Singapore has no states. It's only tiny in geographic terms, so it doesnt need them. New Zealand has no states. But it has provinces. But the provinces have no part in the postal system, so its no use putting a province name in a postal address. And zip codes ( they call them post codes) arent necessary. Just voluntary. (Or they were last i heard). Canada has provinces, but they ARE used in postal addresses. But the Canadian zip codes arent 5 digit numbers, they are alphanumeric. The USA has phone numbers in the format 555-555-5555 but Australia has 55-5555-5555. unless you are calling from outside the country, in which case the phone number is in the format 5-5555-5555 or 55-5555-5555. New Zealand has 55-555-5555. Except mobile phones which are 10 digits. Multiply these parameters by 250-odd countries and you can see the validation issues you face. And that doesnt allow for anyone to change anything. In short, if you want to keep yourself a full-time job for life, convince your clients you have to have all this validation and it must be kept up to date. Cheers Mike Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer AFP Webworks http://afpwebworks.com ColdFusion, PHP, ASP, ASP.NET hosting from AUD$15/month On 10/24/06, Doug Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I have a user table which will hold address information for a user. My > problem comes in where different countries use different things for their > address. Should I store all this different info in different columns, and > leave them to allow NULL values, and let the processing page handle things > and put stuff where it belongs? > > IE: > > > The US has... > > cities > States > Zip Codes > > In say the UK it has... > > towns/cities > counties > Postal Code > > In Algeria... > > City > State/Province/Region > Postal Code > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Introducing the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update. 80 pages of hard-hitting, up-to-date ColdFusion information by your peers, delivered to your door four times a year. http://www.fusionauthority.com/quarterly Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:257932 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4
