  Let K be a finite field with q elements and let X be a subset of a projective
space P^{s-1}, over the field K, which is parameterized by Laurent monomials.
Let I(X) be the vanishing ideal of X. Some of the main contributions of this
paper are in determining the structure of I(X) and some of their invariants. It
is shown that I(X) is a lattice ideal. We introduce the notion of a
parameterized code arising from X and present algebraic methods to compute and
study its dimension, length and minimum distance. For a parameterized code
arising from a connected graph we are able to compute its length and to make
our results more precise. If the graph is non-bipartite, we show an upper bound
for the minimum distance. We also study the underlying geometric structure of
X.
