Based on our work for the Paranomicon, a need for a database containing all of the cities in the world was identified. This would allow for dynamically linked dropdown select boxes on the submission form where one could pick a location and have it auto populate the next select box. In other words, one choose the country the location is in and the next select box, State/Region, is populated with the correct information for that country only, using an AJAX call to not refresh the page.Making a choice in State/Region auto populates the City select box with only the cities that reside in that area. Making a choice in the Cities select box auto populates the Postal Code select box with only the Postal codes for that city. Thus:
The issue we ran into was the lack of valid information to create this, that was being offered for free. After many months, of work, we have gathered as much information as we can from various sites across the internet and have sanitized and cleaned them up. Since this was a major undertaking for us, we have decided to share our work with the rest of you and give code examples as well as allowing the files to be downloaded. The code is based around making a Joomla Component but we are sure that you can piece together what you need if you are using these outside of the Joomla CMS.