What data to add next?

[mledoze]

I would like to discuss here the data that should be added to this repository.

A similar project like 0xJS [1] contains a lot more data such as the land area or the latitude/longitude coordinates of each country.

Is it interesting/useful to have this kind of data too?

Data that can be added:

• land (land mass in square kilometers [3])
• latitude (latitude coordinate of the capital [2])
• longitude (longitude coordinate of the capital [2])
• east (longitude of the country's eastern boundary [3])
• north (latitude of the country's northern boundary [3])
• south (latitude of the country's southern boundary [3])

What would you like to be added?

Please let me know in the comments.

[1] http://oxjs.org/#doc/Ox.COUNTRIES [2] source: http://opengeocode.org/ [3] source: https://oxjs.org/#doc/Ox.COUNTRIES

---

From the comments

• add the type of the country (country, sovereign state, public body, territory, etc.)
• add the land borders (done, see https://github.com/mledoze/countries/tree/v1.3)
• add regions, provinces and cities

[mledoze]

@romsson that's ok for me! Would you like to do this?

[romsson]

I'll do it! Happy to contribute this this super useful project @mledoze

[mledoze]

For future contributions regarding country name translations, I found this CSV [1] which might help.

[1] http://jonahellison.com/21640-translated-country-names-unicode-csv

[yackermann]

@mledoze I think we need to update translations objects according to the "name" object.

"translations":{
    "de": {
        "common":"Russland",
        "official":"Russische Föderation"
    }...
}

[mledoze]

@herrniemand I'm ok with this change, although I'm reserved about the increased size of countries.json.

[Sjord]

I would like to know whether a country is in the European Union. Is that something suitable for this project to include for every country?

[mledoze]

@Sjord

I would like to know whether a country is in the European Union. Is that something suitable for this project to include for every country?

This has been asked here before (https://github.com/mledoze/countries/issues/6#issuecomment-46950625) and answered (https://github.com/mledoze/countries/issues/6#issuecomment-47659566). Unfortunately, this is not suitable to include in this project.

Though, thank you for asking!

[yackermann]

@mledoze I kept translation in one line to keep it smaller.

[mledoze]

I kept translation in one line to keep it smaller.

@herrniemand I saw it, very good.

[mledoze]

Yay :smile: I just got this short URL http://git.io/countries for this project!

[petert82]

Sweet! :dancers:

[yackermann]

@mledoze YAY!!!!!!!!!XD

[shehi]

I strongly would advise the addition of provinces and major cities. There already exist few packages in Github, with limited range of countries of course, such as:

https://github.com/astockwell/countries-and-provinces-states-regions https://github.com/substack/provinces

If licenses are compatible, they could be included within this package with due credits wherever applicable.

[yackermann]

@shehi #40 is the discussion about that. And @fayder proposed here(comment) the structure.

[yackermann]

@mledoze I just posted it on echojs... and it gone... XD

[mledoze]

@herrniemand yay thank you:) http://www.echojs.com/news/13325

[yackermann]

@mledoze XD Thank you dude! Bloody brilliant project! XD

[mledoze]

Yesterday was a good day, look at the stats:

[yackermann]

@mledoze its maintainers only view *( Send screenshot.

[yackermann]

@mledoze Nice! *)

[qweek]

Add sea borders

[cumanacr]

Hi, super useful project! Thanks for maintaining it.

I'm aware that population data were added it, then, were removed on:

@herrniemand population data was already added to this dataset (81fa9f6) but later removed (see #6 (comment)).

But, What about include population historical data only?

Like this:

        "name": {
            "common": "Costa Rica",
            "official": "Republic of Costa Rica",
            "native": {
                "spa": {
                    "official": "Rep\u00fablica de Costa Rica",
                    "common": "Costa Rica"
                }
            }
        },
.
.
.
        "population": {
            "2013": { "unit": "million", "amount":"4.872" },
            "2012": { "unit": "million", "amount":"4.805" },
            "2011": { "unit": "million", "amount":"4.738" },
            "2010": { "unit": "million", "amount":"4.67" },
        }
 }

And we can get another interesting historical info for each country from google like:

• Life expectancy
• GDP per capita
• Fertility rate

Same pattern

        "lifeExpectancy": {
            "2012": { "unit": "year", "amount":"79.7" },
            "2011": { "unit": "year", "amount":"79.49" },
            "2010": { "unit": "year", "amount":"79.28" },
        }

What do you think? I would be glad to help with this

Regards

[mledoze]

Hello @cumanacr, thank you for your comment but unfortunately this project does not contains historical data. One good candidate for this kind of data would be the tinata project, you could ask there.

[cumanacr]

@mledoze thanks, but no thanks, I like this project :smiley:

Maybe a separate file like #40 proposes for the country regions but on historical data, eg:

• cri.historicaldata.json
• cri.hdata.json
• cri.hd.json

This way, countries.json keeps small.

maybe something like that, is better?

Regards

[JacquesMarais]

Multiple Capitals.

[Purus]

We have just the list of languages. How about adding official languages? For example, India has too many languages and there are around 15+ official languges out of all.

[mledoze]

@Purus the languages property already contains the list of official languages for each country (see README). I know that there are some countries with many recognised regional languages, I would prefer no to take them into account as it would make the dataset too big.

[lifenautjoe]

How about adding the currencies names?

e.g.

    "currencies" : {
      "eur" : "Euro",
      "mxn" : "Peso"
    }

[petert82]

@thefabulousdev For me, that's something that's better solved by cross-reference to a dedicated data-set. Something like this for example.

[yackermann]

@petert82 agree

[BaseMax]

can you add language direction? ltr and rtl ?

[BaseMax]

can you add language direction? ltr and rtl ?

[pjona]

Hey,

would you be interested to add Polish translation? I could prepare commit with data from this list.

[yackermann]

We can. But not using that list. It is mixed up. There no distinction between official name and common name, such as

• Rosya(Russia) - common
• Republika Południowej Afryki(Republic of South Africa) - official

2015-08-21 12:26 GMT+12:00 Marek Skiba notifications@github.com:

Hey,

would you be interested to add Polish translation? I could prepare commit with data from this list https://gist.github.com/lukaszfiszer/7185871.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/mledoze/countries/issues/6#issuecomment-133226393.

[mledoze]

@pjona

would you be interested to add Polish translation?

That could be a good addition, but @herrniemand is right we will need both common and official names.

[TuningGuide]

I would like to have the ISO639-1 code (de for Austria) in the list.

[jhourlad]

Lovely. I would have used it if it has timezone in it.

[mledoze]

@jhourlad please read this thread https://github.com/mledoze/countries/pull/106 to see why timezones were not added in this project.

[martin-ro]

Looking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent there is no "Oceania" continent. The JSON label says region which makes sense to call the proximate islands of Australia Oceania though its not really a continent (depending who you ask).

Would it make sense to add a continent field according to one or more of the existing continent models?

cheers

[olimortimer]

As mentioned by others, it would be useful to be able to know if a country is within the EU.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_state_of_the_European_Union

[mledoze]

Hello @olimortimer, yes this has been asked before by others, but unfortunately, this kind of data does not suit this project.

Please see this comment https://github.com/mledoze/countries/issues/6#issuecomment-71026239.

[maquejp]

Hello, About adding the cities, you can maybe see what the Eurostat is doing : http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/nuts/overview

[maquejp]

Add a format: SQL (for main AND data) I have done it for the main (1st draft of the data attached to this comment) I will work on the by country files to turn them into SQL too.

mledoze.countries.sql.zip

[yackermann]

@maquejp Countries project ideology is KISS. Adding cities would majorly increase the size of the project, and would not serve according value. So I personally vote not on that idea.

About SQL DUMP: I don't see much of an issue to write a script that loads json into DB. There are far more then enough solutions online/stackoverflow. As addition it is a major security risk, to just load random sql dumps into databases. So I vote no on that one as well.

[cmacdonald]

What about the past? In using countries.json to analyse past pieces of text, I found "soviet" was not identified. Would adding a historical extension of the data with applicable dates be achievable in the long term?

[yackermann]

@cmacdonald Countries project goal is to provide basic information about current de-jure political state of the world. We provide basic, static information.

History will never be part of this project as it is contradicts the goal of this project to provide basic and static information, and due to single case use limitation.

[mledoze]

Hello @cmacdonald, I'm sorry but historical data are out of scope for this project.

[8alery]

Hello! I think adding emoji for country flag will be nice. You can find emoji of flags here: http://emojiflags.com/

[dominicbartl]

If someone is searching for a country list with info if the country is in the EU: Here's a short script to append the info to the country list.

https://gist.github.com/Bartinger/f0507c786bad45cc942de471b1427e48

[mledoze]

@Bartinger thank you for that! :)