I have a general question about writing web applications. Many times I have static data, say a list of countries, or a list of options for radio buttons or a drop down menu. I don't like hard coding this stuff into the HTML because it makes it hard to change. I am wondering what is the best place to store the data. I've been storing it in tables in a database, but would rather not do this as I want to avoid slowing my application down by making unnecessary database calls. Should I just load it in the actual code file such as:
countries = ["America", "Canada", .... ]
or is there a better place?
Does it matter how much data it is? Would the answer change from a list of 5 items to a list of 500 or 5,000.
It depends on what you want.
Hardcoding into the html is faster, and more efficient when your list is small. However, as your list grows longer, a database could be a better choice, because modifying the database is easier.
An alternative option is to store the list in a separate file, and load it into your html using ajax, which is lighter than a database, and easier to modify than hardcoding.