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?

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.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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");

Answer 4

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");

Answer 5

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.

Answer 6

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'