= LocalizedCountrySelect

Rails plugin to provide support for localized <tt><select></tt> menu with country names and for
storing country information as country _code_ (eg. 'es'), not _name_ (eg. 'Spain'), in the database.

Uses the Rails internationalization framework (I18n, http://rails-i18n.org) for translating the names of countries.
Requires Rails 2.2 (released November 21st, 2008) or later versions.
Country names are loaded from hashes in plugin directory, according to <tt>I18n.locale</tt> value.

You can easily translate country codes in your application like this:

    <%= I18n.t @user.country, :scope => 'countries' %>

Comes with a Rake task <tt>rake import:country_select 'de'</tt> for importing country names
from Unicode.org's CLDR repository (http://www.unicode.org/cldr/data/charts/summary/root.html)
Don't forget to restart the application when you add new locale.

ActionView helper code is adapted from Rails' default +country_select+ plugin (previously in core).
See http://github.com/rails/country_select/tree/master/lib/country_select.rb

== Examples

Show the complete country name:

    <%= country_select(:user, :country, {}, :include_blank => 'Please choose...') %>

will become:
    
    <select name="user[country]" id="user_country">
    <option value="">Please choose...</option>
    <option disabled="disabled" value="">-------------</option>
    <option value="AF">Afghanistan</option>
    ...
    <option value="ZW">Zimbabwe</option>
    </select>


Show only the country codes:

    <%= country_select(:user, :country, {:description => :abbreviated}, :include_blank => 'Please choose...') %>

will become:
    
    <select name="user[country]" id="user_country">
    <option value="">Please choose...</option>
    <option disabled="disabled" value="">-------------</option>
    <option value="AF">AF</option>
    ...
    <option value="ZW">ZW</option>
    </select>
for the <tt>en</tt> locale.

== Other resources

* http://github.com/rails/country_select (Default Rails plugin)
* http://github.com/russ/country_code_select (Stores country code, not name)


Copyright (c) 2008 Karel Minarik (www.karmi.cz), released under the MIT license