Webservice to create account, country state list?

Question

I have a webservice that a developer can use to create a user account, apart of the create user account form, it requires an input of the user's "Postal Address"

The Postal address has "Country State Id"

Normally, I would provide a list for everything else, but when it comes to country state list it contains thousands and thousands of states/regions and its too much to list in a API specification document.

So my question is,

1) do you create a web service for the developer to retrieve the country state id?

or

2) provide the developer with a database file, with the list of country state id?

I'm thinking #2 would be best.

Answer 1

You might just be able to delegate this to a third-party webservice from your own. There is info on that option here. This one looks like you can get the required data for free, as a DB or webservice: http://www.geonames.org/export/

There are paid options as well as free, YMMV I am sure.