User-supplied geo format should be checked and descriptive error returned

[nmdefries]

Feedback from Phil (SCCPHD)

Actual Behavior:

If I put a 6-digit number when trying to select a county, it says that the geo is not found.

Steps to Reproduce the Bug:

Put a 6-digit number when trying to show data for a county.

Expected behavior

Validate format of geo value (e.g. that FIPS is 5-digits; if less than 5, left-pad with 0s). I would like better feedback if the geo value is not found because it's an invalid format. Right now, the user doesn't have a good idea of what are valid/invalid formats. Some of the geo types are less standard than others and may have different ways to specify.

Rating Scale (1 is minor, 7 is severe):

3?

[melange396]

FIPS codes are specifically 5 digits, so 4 or 6 digits are technically out-of spec ("01001" is valid but "1001" and "001001" are not). The actual message returned is "Invalid geo_value(s) 001001 for the requested geo_type county", which is not super helpful though it is factual.

Dropping a preceding zero is an easy mistake to make though, so it wouldnt hurt to left-pad some 0s up to 5 chars/digits when a county is requested. Analogously, we could auto-lowercase any requested state codes to provide a similar result. This functionality best belongs in the API server code, so i will transfer this ticket to https://github.com/cmu-delphi/delphi-epidata .

[melange396]

related to #1365

[melange396]

This should also be extended to normalize state geo_values by converting them to lowercase; "pa" is a valid state code, but "PA" is considered invalid by the API.