We can get products belonging to a product category or product tag very easily. What’s much more difficult is getting single variations based on a product category or product tag, as variations… don’t have a category or tag, which belong to its “parent” variable product instead.
In this post, we will define a function that you can reuse in your custom code whenever you need to get all variation IDs based on a given product category or product tag. You can then loop through the array and return whatever info you need. Enjoy!
PHP Snippet: Retrieve List of Variations By Product Category or Tag
/**
* @snippet Get Variation IDs By Taxonomy Term
* @how-to businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-customization
* @author Rodolfo Melogli, Business Bloomer
* @compatible WooCommerce 7
* @community https://businessbloomer.com/club/
*/
function get_variations_from_term( $term, $taxonomy, $type ) {
global $wpdb;
$ids = $wpdb->get_col( "
SELECT DISTINCT p.ID
FROM {$wpdb->prefix}posts as p
INNER JOIN {$wpdb->prefix}term_relationships as tr ON ( p.ID = tr.object_id OR p.post_parent = tr.object_id )
INNER JOIN {$wpdb->prefix}term_taxonomy as tt ON tr.term_taxonomy_id = tt.term_taxonomy_id
INNER JOIN {$wpdb->prefix}terms as t ON tt.term_id = t.term_id
WHERE p.post_type = 'product_variation'
AND p.post_status = 'publish'
AND p.ID NOT IN (
SELECT DISTINCT post_parent
FROM {$wpdb->prefix}posts
WHERE post_type = 'product_variation'
AND post_status = 'publish'
)
AND tt.taxonomy = '$taxonomy'
AND t.$type = '$term'
" );
return $ids;
}
You can then use the following in order to get the variation IDs by category or tag:
// BY PRODUCT CATEGORY
get_variations_from_term( 'chairs', 'product_cat', 'slug' );
get_variations_from_term( 59, 'product_cat', 'term_id' );
// ETC
// BY PRODUCT TAG
get_variations_from_term( 'shiny', 'product_tag', 'slug' );
get_variations_from_term( 'Super heavy', 'product_tag', 'name' );
// ETC
Hello
I am looking everywhere for a way to add different categories to each variation of ONE product in woo commerce
e.g.:
parent product T-shirt (category: clothing) > variation #1 T-shirt red, variation #2 T-shirt blue, variation #3 T-shirt green.
At the moment all different colour t-shirts would be under category clothing (in this example)
I want to be able to assign each variation it’s own category (e.g. variation #1 T-shirt red – category red, variation #2 T-shirt blue – category blue etc
It might seem mad, but it’s for a service based business, not actually for clothes.
I am trying to integrate with a mailing system to add each product variation to a different mailing list. The mailing system only recognises the main product category.
I am realising it seems more complex than I had imagined.
If you could point me in the right direction I would be very grateful!
Many Thanks
Categories and tags are currently designed to be assigned to the parent product, not the individual variations. So, you need a workaround…
(1) You can install a plugin like “Advanced Custom Fields” to create custom fields specifically for variations. This allows you to add information similar to tags for each variation. While not exactly the same as tags, it provides a way to categorize variations with additional details.
(2) If the variations are drastically different and require separate categorization, it might be better to create individual products instead of using variations. This gives you more control over assigning categories and tags.