Magento - Get Country Id from Name - is there a easier/quicker way?

Question

I need to load the 2 letter ISO2 country ID for a given country name. Right now, I use the following method to do this: ``` // Method to Get countryId from CountryName function getCountryId($countryName) { $countryId = ''; $countryCollection = Mage::getModel('directory/country')->getCollection(); foreach ($countryCollection as $country) { if ($countryName == $country->getName()) { $countryId = $country->getCountryId(); break; } } $countryCollection = null; return $countryId; } ``` Usage: ``` var_dump(getCountryId('Germany')); ``` Outputs: ``` string(2) "DE" ``` Is there a easier/quicker way to do this instead of loading the country collection and iterating through it every time?

Accepted Answer

Surprisingly, looping is the only way you'll achieve this.

The country names are stored in XML files in `lib/Zend/Locale/Data/` and they're organized by locale (en, es, fr) and then country code, not country name.

Since it's not a SQL table you can't add a `WHERE` clause (using Magento's `addFieldToFilter()`), so you'll be looping through the XML nodes anyway.

Magento - Get Country Id from Name - is there a easier/quicker way?

Solution

Problem