PIC Product Configurator

Category : Knowledge Share

We need to create a base product in WooCommerce that is configurable and will provide an SKU without creating a product for each SKU.

For an example product to follow along, you can click here!

The product has a bas SKU and a price, and these get updated based on the attributes selected. This particular product has 9 attributes with between 2 and 9 options to select to define the product. There are a total of 43 alternatives if we sum up the 9 attributes and a total of 508,032 combinations of these alternatives.

It’s clear that creating variations for all of them is impossible. However, just adding 43 SKUs and 43 price increments is something possible to do.

We decided to create a plugin that would allow us to transform a WooCommerce simple product into a configurable product. Woo admin would be able to select for these products which attributes are going to be part of the configuration and which of those attributes are required fields. Then, for the attributes selected the admin would be able to add SKU and price increment corresponding to each option.

The new SKU and price will replace base SKU and price in the sales process.

Product Configurator plugin results…

Once the plugin is installed and activated for simple products, two new tabs are available: Product Configurator and Product Configurator Settings.

In the Product Configurator tab, the attributes that are going to be part of the configuration are selected and also if those are required in the product page.

In the Product Configurator Settings tab, the “extra” SKU and price increment for each option of each attribute are filled there.

The client side of the Product Configurator would look like a variable product with different options. The price and the SKU will be updated based on the selections made.

The new SKU would be added to the title of the product as well.

This is an overview of the PIC Product Configurator project. For the full write up from the R&D team, check out this page that documents all the details and resources necessary for engineers!