Get RegionInfo by country name?

Question

I want to be able to get RegionInfo by doing the following:

new RegionInfo("United Kingdom");

but this throws an exception and says that it is not recognised.

This page on RegionInfo says that an exception is thrown if 'name is not a valid country/region name'.

And yet this page specifies a list of predefined regions used by the class that and contains United Kingdom, so why doesn't creating a new RegionInfo with country name work?

Kirkwall

Please, read the documentation well: The RegionInfo name is one of the two-letter codes defined in ISO 3166 for country/region. – Clementia

Answer 1

  var regions = CultureInfo.GetCultures(CultureTypes.SpecificCultures).Select(x => new RegionInfo(x.LCID));
  var englishRegion = regions.FirstOrDefault(region => region.EnglishName.Contains(name));

If you want to get RegionInfo by the country name, you could get an IEnumerable<RegionInfo> and then filter based on the EnglishName as above. This gives you the ability to populate things such as comboboxes too.

Lyonnais

But it would be null since the EnglishName is "English (United Kingdom)" ;-) So you might want to use FirstOrdefault(r => r.EnglishName.Contains(name)) – Mayer

@LukeHennerley: It will be still null but now without an exception. +1 anyway since Contains instead of == would be too generous. – Mayer

It works for me, EnglishName is appearing as "United Kingdom" – Kirkwall

@Tyler I thought it would work too, the english name for GB on the MSDN is simply United Kingdom – Lyonnais

Answer 2

That same page you linked also says:

The RegionInfo name is one of the two-letter codes defined in ISO 3166 for country/region. Case is not significant; however, the Name, the TwoLetterISORegionName, and the ThreeLetterISORegionName properties return the appropriate code in uppercase.

The codes are on the page, and GB appears to be the 2 letter code for the UK (it's in code order to be difficult searching!). So try this:

new RegionInfo("GB");

Or if you're using .NET 2.0+, it's recommended you use the full culture name:

new RegionInfo("en-GB");

Flowerpot

The Original Poster linked an old version of the spec. Since .NET 2.0 it is recommended to use e.g. "en-GB" instead of just "GB". – Tyika

Great. The other possibilities with GB are: Welsh (United Kingdom) "cy-GB" and Scottish Gaelic (United Kingdom) "gd-GB". – Tyika

Answer 3

From MSDN;

A string that contains a two-letter code defined in ISO 3166 for country/region.

UNITED KINGDOM looks ok on Country names and code elements on the ISO website.

GB UNITED KINGDOM

Try with;

new RegionInfo("GB");

Various

The Original Poster linked an old version of the spec. Since .NET 2.0 it is recommended to use e.g. "en-GB" instead of just "GB". – Tyika

Answer 4

If I navigate to the constructor the summary I see in Visual Studio says:

name: A string that contains a two-letter code defined in ISO 3166 for country/region.-or-A string that contains the culture name for a specific culture, custom culture, or Windows-only culture. If the culture name is not in RFC 4646 format, your application should specify the entire culture name instead of just the country/region.

The entire culture name would be 'en-GB'.

Or you could use 'GB'

Genevivegenevra

There's a newer version of the doc page compared to what the original question links to. It is clearly recommended to use a full specific culture, like "en-GB", instead of just "GB". We don't know what version of the framework is used by the Original Poster, but he should certainly go with new RegionInfo("en-GB"). – Tyika

Answer 5

Look at the MSDN page:

A string containing one of the two-letter codes defined in ISO 3166 for country/region.

You need the ISO 3166 code for the UK, not the name of the country.

Here's the code you need.

Amphicoelous

Answer 6

Note this comment from the metadata for the parameter name which explains the change from .NET Framework 2.0 on:

    //     A string containing one of the two-letter codes defined in ISO 3166 for country/region.-or-Beginning
    //     in .NET Framework version 2.0, a string containing the culture name for a
    //     specific culture, custom culture, or Windows-only culture. If the culture
    //     name is not in RFC 4646 format, your application should specify the entire
    //     culture name, not just the country/region.

Thing