CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Greetings all, I apologize in advance if this is a n00b question but it's got me stumped.

Here's the scenario:  I've got an event for which I have a Custom Profile defined and shown on the registration so I can gather extra event-relevant information on the participant.  One of the Custom Data fields is "U.S. Voting State", because I need to know which US state they're eligible to vote in.  I would like to have this field as a drop-down single select limited to the 50 US states.

However, as this is an international event, the participant might LIVE anywhere in the world.  So my CiviCRM global settings are set to contain all countries and and their states/counties/provinces, with U.S. being defined as the "default" country for any form.

If I create a custom data field, I can only create a select on either "state" or "country", but not combine them. So the state selector in the form produces a list of ALL states in ALL nations -- I want it limited to just the 50 US states.

Options I've considered: 
-- making an alphanumeric custom select list only allows me 10 select options. (plus I don't want to have to retype all 50 state names  )
-- making a simple alphanumeric text entry box and making the participant enter it by hand (I'd really prefer to standardize the entries so searches and reports will be cleaner)

Ideas, or something simple I've missed? 

a couple of options:

1. store that informaton in a :U.S. Voting State: location type. In the profile u can include both state and country for that location type

2. Create a select field and use the hook:

http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC40/CiviCRM+hook+specification#CiviCRMhookspecification-hookcivicrmcustomFieldOptions

lobo

Thanks Lobo, worked a treat! Set up a USVoting location type, and added both USVoting:Country and USVoting:State to the Custom Profile.  As United States is the default country, the registration form populates that automatically and loads the US states in the "state" select box.  Then I just "hid" the USVoting:Country select box using CSS.

Now off to learn more about hooks...