How to create a list of US states in python ?

Examples of how to create a list of US states and and an example of applications with python:

Create a list of US states

Let's create a list of US states

us_states = ['Alabama', 'Alaska', 'Arizona', 'Arkansas', 'California', 'Colorado', 'Connecticut', 'Washington DC', 'Delaware', 'Florida', 'Georgia', 'Hawaii', 'Idaho', 'Illinois', 'Indiana', 'Iowa', 'Kansas', 'Kentucky', 'Louisiana', 'Maine', 'Maryland', 'Massachusetts', 'Michigan', 'Minnesota', 'Mississippi', 'Missouri', 'Montana', 'Nebraska', 'Nevada', 'New Hampshire', 'New Jersey', 'New Mexico', 'New York', 'North Carolina', 'North Dakota', 'Ohio', 'Oklahoma', 'Oregon', 'Pennsylvania', 'Rhode Island', 'South Carolina', 'South Dakota', 'Tennessee', 'Texas', 'Utah', 'Vermont', 'Virginia', 'Washington', 'West Virginia', 'Wisconsin', 'Wyoming']

Note that the list indludes Washington DC. So

len(us_states)

returns

51

Create a list of US states with states codes

Adding states codes:

us_states_enh = [("AL","Alabama"),("AK","Alaska"),("AZ","Arizona"),("AR","Arkansas"),("CA", "California"),("CO", "Colorado"),
("CT","Connecticut"),("DC","Washington DC"),("DE","Delaware"),("FL","Florida"),("GA","Georgia"),
("HI","Hawaii"),("ID","Idaho"),("IL","Illinois"),("IN","Indiana"),("IA","Iowa"),("KS","Kansas"),("KY","Kentucky"),
("LA","Louisiana"),("ME","Maine"),("MD","Maryland"),("MA","Massachusetts"),("MI","Michigan"),("MN","Minnesota"),
("MS","Mississippi"),("MO","Missouri"),("MT","Montana"),("NE","Nebraska"),("NV","Nevada"),("NH","New Hampshire"),
("NJ","New Jersey"),("NM","New Mexico"),("NY","New York"),("NC","North Carolina"),("ND","North Dakota"),("OH","Ohio"),
("OK","Oklahoma"),("OR","Oregon"),("PA","Pennsylvania"),("RI","Rhode Island"),("SC","South Carolina"),("SD","South Dakota"),
("TN","Tennessee"),("TX","Texas"),("UT","Utah"),("VT","Vermont"),("VA","Virginia"),("WA","Washington"),("WV","West Virginia"),
("WI","Wisconsin"),("WY","Wyoming")]

Example of application

I have a blog with a lot of articles and each article has some tags (stored in a string and separated by ;):

tag = 'Arkansas; Colorado; Travel; Tips; City'.split(';')

Goal find if an article uses a US states in tag.

First step: convert into a list:

tag = [i.split()[0] for i in tag]

tag = ['Arkansas', 'Colorado', 'Travel', 'Tips', 'City']

and now check the two lists tag and us_states has common elememts:

tag_as_set = set(tag)
intersection = tag_as_set.intersection(usa_states_list)

for i in intersection:
    print( i )

returns here:

Colorado
Arkansas

References

• A python list of all US state abbreviations.
• How to find common elements between two lists in Python