Generating 1000 rules with a script

Hi Max,

Although there might be a way to import that into plugin settings I’d discourage you from doing this. The reason is that it will not work well in terms of performance with such a great number of rules. The plugin is supposed to be used with tens of rules, not hundreds.

Maybe we can simplify the configuration. Would you mind to describe how the rates generated? Is there a source table which you grab rules from with your script? Maybe they can be turned into a smaller number of progressive rates, like this: take $5 for first 1kg, add $1 for each additional 0.5kg?

Hello,

Unfortunately the rates do not increase at a set step each kg – each kg becomes cheaper and cheaper the larger the order becomes. I.e. 1kg is ￡1, 2kg is ￡2, 3kg is ￡2.90 and so on. For this reason I can’t just use the step field.

Here are the first 8 rows from the rates table (total of 141 rows):

Weight,A,B,C,D,E,F,H,R,S,T,U,V,W
0.5,11.03,20.95,25.34,32.04,38.22,21.22,11.03,10.25,10.25,13.22,14.76,19.71,10.25
1,12.07,23.21,26.02,36.01,38.22,23.63,12.07,10.25,10.25,13.22,14.76,21.66,10.25
1.5,13.1,25.46,29.24,39.97,38.22,26.05,13.1,10.25,10.25,13.22,14.76,23.6,10.25
2,14.14,27.72,32.46,43.92,40.74,28.46,14.14,10.25,10.25,13.22,14.76,25.55,10.25
2.5,15.18,29.97,35.68,47.88,44.69,30.87,15.18,10.25,10.25,13.22,14.76,27.5,10.25
3,15.77,31.69,37.54,50.55,48.08,31.68,15.77,10.25,10.25,13.22,14.76,28.63,10.25
3.5,16.36,33.41,39.38,53.3,51.18,33.24,16.36,10.25,10.25,13.22,14.76,29.76,10.25
4,16.95,35.14,41.22,56.05,54.27,34.79,16.95,10.25,10.25,13.22,14.76,30.89,10.25

Each letter indicates a zone, which is a collection of countries. With one rule per country and weight bracket I will need 1833 rules to achieve this. Unless you can think of a better way?

In the meantime I will do some performance testing to get an idea of how efficient it will be.

Cheers
Max.

Thanks.

There are consecutive rules in the table having same price per weight. So the total number of rules can be reduced by folding similar ones. It seems it would be still very high, though.

I think it would be better to make a custom shipping plugin in your case. It should not be difficult since you have scripting skills.

I’m still sure this plugin will not work well with a large number of rules, due to the way it’s working. However, if you have some testing results it would be interesting to see them.

Hello,

Sorry for the late reply; I was working on other parts of the site.

With 1200 rules it takes about 7 seconds on a slow testing sever to perform the shipping calculation on the checkout page. Once reduced to 600 it took 5 seconds, which will be too slow in production once concurrent users visit the site.

I’ll take a look into using the fedex API instead, otherwise I’ll create a custom plugin. Am I right in thinking the main performance limitation for this plugin is the fact that the rules are saved as wp_options and aren’t in their own table?

Cheers
Max.

Hi,

No, wp_options is not an issue at all. The issue is that each rule is a WC_Shipping_Method instance. I.e. WooCommerce treats each rule as a shipping method which implies an overhead in both memory and cpu usage. That’s not an issue when there are a few tens of rules, but it is when there hundreds of them.

Ah I see. Thanks for your help.

In case anybody in the future sees this thread and decides to go the same route, feel free to use my import script found on github here:

https://github.com/maxmumford/woocommerce-weight-shipping-import

It’s very slow but does the job…

Max

@maxmumford your script seems the sort of solution I’d need in a multi-vendor set up for rates based on country zones. Are the rates here based on shipping from one location to multiple destinations? I’d like a vendor in Canada or Trinidad to be able to set their “ship from” location and outbound parcel post rates to preset zones.

Thanks for sharing your script.

@starapple, the plugin does not support multiple origins. It seems the import script has nothing to do with this limitation.

Hi guys,

Sorry for the late reply, I’ve been swamped, and this project unfortunately has been put on indefinite hold… Feel free to fork and modify the script though.

Good luck
Max