Question

I have a zip table and a city table. Thereby a zip code can have only one city, but a city can have different zip codes. Now the user fills out zip code and city. In the table zip the field city is a foreign key to the table city. Different zip codes should point to only one city name. Here the user can make use of different spellings and I want to avoid that.

These are the possibilities which come to my mind:

• AutoSuggestion (JQuery Cool Auto-Suggest, AutoSuggest jQuery Plugin, AutoSuggest v.2.0, …)
• Search similar names in database (with ?)

Do you know any other possibilities?

Answer 1

Have them enter the zip code first and then make an AJAX call to get the city automatically.

var zip = $('#zip').val();
$.get('http://someurl/get_city_for_zip/' + zip, function (data) {
    // Assuming data is the city:
    $('#city').val(data);
});