Magento: How to alphabetically sort the state/province dropdown's items

Question

I'd like to alphabetically sort the items in the department/region dropdown. This dropdown is visible on the billing information section on the checkout page.

I am using Magento CE 1.7.0.2 and setting an address in France, hence trying to see France's departments sorted.

Answer 1

One solution consists in rewriting the script js/varien/forms.js. In its update function, create a sorted collection of regions, then iterate over this collection and add each region's option.

A better solution, performance wise, is to re-affect region ids in the table directory_country_region. Currently, region's ids order the region by country_id and code. Re-setting the region ids so that regions are ordered by country_id and default_name would do the work.