# Countries and states

Solidus uses the list of countries and states provided by Carmen, which uses the countries and states available in the Debian iso-codes package. Solidus creates new Spree::Country and Spree::State objects for each country and state.

Carmen is generally up-to-date and should provide Solidus with any country or state you would ever need.

# Countries

If a country or state you require is not recognized, you can add it directly from your Rails console:

Spree::Country.create!(iso_name:"NEW COUNTRY", name:"New Country", states_required: true)

Some countries do not need to be divided into states or subregions. For those countries, the Spree::Country object's states_required field is set to false. You may wish to change this value for your custom country or any other country that you ship to.

# States

A state is any sub-region of a country, whether that is a province, district, or territory. If the state you require is not recognized, you can add it directly from your Rails console:

Spree::State.create!(name: "New State", country_id: 1)

The country_id should match the country that the state belongs to.