A Drupal form states dropdown field (list of states) example

I was just working on a Drupal form, and I wanted to include a list of states (the United States) in a dropdown field (an HTML select/options field). Knowing that I'll need this list of states for other Drupal applications, I decided to put the "states" code in a separate file.

To that end I put this list of states in a file named states.inc, in the same directory with the rest of my Drupal module code:

<?php

$state_options = array(
  '' => t('--- Select ---'),
  'AL' => t('Alabama'),
  'AK' => t('Alaska'),
  'AZ' => t('Arizona'),
  'AR' => t('Arkansas'),
  'CA' => t('California'),
  'CO' => t('Colorado'),
  'CT' => t('Connecticut'),
  'DE' => t('Delaware'),
  'DC' => t('District of Columbia'),
  'FL' => t('Florida'),
  'GA' => t('Georgia'),
  'HI' => t('Hawaii'),
  'ID' => t('Idaho'),
  'IL' => t('Illinois'),
  'IN' => t('Indiana'),
  'IA' => t('Iowa'),
  'KS' => t('Kansas'),
  'KY' => t('Kentucky'),
  'LA' => t('Louisiana'),
  'ME' => t('Maine'),
  'MD' => t('Maryland'),
  'MA' => t('Massachusetts'),
  'MI' => t('Michigan'),
  'MN' => t('Minnesota'),
  'MS' => t('Mississippi'),
  'MO' => t('Missouri'),
  'MY' => t('Montana'),
  'NE' => t('Nebraska'),
  'NV' => t('Nevada'),
  'NH' => t('New Hampshire'),
  'NJ' => t('New Jersey'),
  'NM' => t('New Mexico'),
  'NY' => t('New York'),
  'NC' => t('North Carolina'),
  'ND' => t('North Dakota'),
  'OH' => t('Ohio'),
  'OK' => t('Oklahoma'),
  'OR' => t('Oregon'),
  'PA' => t('Pennsylvania'),
  'RI' => t('Rhode Island'),
  'SC' => t('South Carolina'),
  'SD' => t('South Dakota'),
  'TN' => t('Tennessee'),
  'TX' => t('Texas'),
  'UT' => t('Utah'),
  'VT' => t('Vermont'),
  'VA' => t('Virginia'),
  'WA' => t('Washington'),
  'WV' => t('West Virginia'),
  'WI' => t('Wisconsin'),
  'WY' => t('Wyoming'),
);

I then put the following code into the file where I defined my Drupal form:

require_once 'states.inc';

$form['state'] = array(
  '#title' => t('State'),
  '#description' => "The state where your business is located.",
  '#type' => 'select',
  '#options' => $state_options,
  '#default_value' => $state,
  '#required' => TRUE,
);

I need to do something different about handling the fact that this field is required, but hopefully everything else here is very straightforward.

This article was inspired by a list of states I found on this ignored by dinosaurs website, and on a related note, I've previously shared a more general list of states for an HTML select/option field (drop-down list).