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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.

user2662692
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  • I am using Python. If I have a file called constants.py and fill it with all my constants, will it load everything in the file when I import it? – user2662692 Dec 10 '14 at 22:29

2 Answers2

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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.

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The database is the right place, because some of this data is not so static as you might think at the beginning of a project. Additional, but not alternatively, you can use config files.
You can create a cache for this static or seldom changed data to improve the performance.

Gren
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