ISO2 country code from country name

Question

Is there an easy way in Java to get the ISO2 code from a given country name, for example "CH" when given "Switzerland"?

The only solution I can think of at the moment is to save all the country codes and names in an array and iterate over it. Any other (easier) solutions?

Answer 1

You could use the built-in Locale class:

Locale l = new Locale("", "CH");
System.out.println(l.getDisplayCountry());

prints "Switzerland" for example. Note that I have not provided a language.

So what you can do for the reverse lookup is build a map from the available countries:

public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
    Map<String, String> countries = new HashMap<>();
    for (String iso : Locale.getISOCountries()) {
        Locale l = new Locale("", iso);
        countries.put(l.getDisplayCountry(), iso);
    }

    System.out.println(countries.get("Switzerland"));
    System.out.println(countries.get("Andorra"));
    System.out.println(countries.get("Japan"));
}