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What would be the best way to store the country of a user in SQL? (gregtech.eu)

submitted 3 days ago by lena@gregtech.eu to c/programming@programming.dev

41 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Cross-posted from "What would be the best way to store the country of a user in SQL?" by @lena@gregtech.eu in !learn_programming@programming.dev

I use Gorm. This is the current code:

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"log"

	"gorm.io/driver/sqlite"
	"gorm.io/gorm"
)

type Env struct {
	DB     *gorm.DB
	Logger *log.Logger
}

type User struct {
	ID           uint
	Username     string
	Name         string
	Email        string
	PasswordHash string
	Country      string //should probably be a foreign key of another table
}

func initDB() {
	env := &Env{}
	db, err := gorm.Open(sqlite.Open("gorm.db"), &gorm.Config{})
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Printf("Error opening database: %v", err)
		return
	}
	env.DB = db
	env.DB.AutoMigrate(&User{})

}

func main() {
	initDB()
}

As you can see in the comment in the code, I assume the best way would be to have a table of countries and then assign each user to one via a foreign key. However, it seems a bit cumbersome to manually create a list of all countries. Is there a better way to do this?

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[–] lena@gregtech.eu 5 points 3 days ago (7 children)

Am I supposed to make an SQL statement that puts these country codes into a table, along with the country's name? There's probably a better way. Maybe I could make a new entry for every unique country a user is from

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 3 days ago (5 children)

not sure I understand the distinction between the "am I supposed to" and "maybe I could" parts?

You should create a table of all countries, you can just copy that from the above link. Then you reference that table with a foreign key in your users table.

[–] lena@gregtech.eu -1 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Sooooo I copy paste every single country code and put it in a table?

[–] JakenVeina@midwest.social 1 points 1 day ago

That's a perfectly valid approach, yes. We do exactly this, at work. It's pretty common, if not ubiquitous, to have your database schema consist of not only structure, but data as well. We call it static data, and it's all defined in deployable scripts, just like our tables and views are. If ISO makes changes to the dataset, then it's just a table update to match it. And ISO is nice about keeping backwards compatibility inb their standards.

Since this is not strictly your own data, you could also go with just storing the code value on your tables, and letting the UI layer do the lookup, either with built-in features of your language/framework, or with a static csv file, like you mention. You may not want to do this for static data that is entirely your own, like, say, a status or type enum, since it makes your database schema less-self-descriptive, and more prone to becoming invalid.

You could also set the country code up as a not-strictly-enforced foreign key, where your app will lookup additional info (E.G. the proper name) for a country code, if it's a standard one, but just skip that if it's not a standard one.

It's up to you what you think is most appropriate.

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