EE custom function to return State Name rather than abbreviation

Question

I have a channel for communities that stores community_name as the 2 letter abbreviation since it is part of the mailing address.

I am trying to build a filtered search but want to display the complete state name rather than its abbreviation.

Where in EE do you put helper functions? In CI, I would just add a file in the system/helpers folder that would hold all of my sitewide functions ( like formatPhone ).

Once I know where to place this very simple function, I also need to know how to display it. Right now I am using <span class="community_state webcam-caption">{community_state}</span> but that would, of course, be the abbreviation.

Thanks in advance, Jon

Answer 1

Jon,

In EE you can develop a small plugin to display the complete state name. You can have a guide from http://ellislab.com/expressionengine/user-guide/development/plugins.html

For example, you can have plugin tag as {exp:custom_plugin community_state="{community_state}"}

and the plugin code would be like:

class Custom_plugin
{
    public $return_data = "";
    public function __construct()
    {
        $community_state = ee()->TMPL->fetch_param('community_state');
        ########
        Code or query to fetch complete state name with $community_state as $complete_state_name
        ########
        $this->return_data = $complete_state_name;
    }
}

I hope, it would help you.