Hide out of stock items from the catalog – the case where it doesn’t work

  • Hi there,

    I read this topic – Major bug in product inventory status and there is one thing I would like to clarify.?

    Shameem (woo-hc) (@shameemreza) wrote:

    If a parent product is marked as in stock, but all its variations are out of stock, it should still appear in the catalogue.

    The exact conditions to recreate this case:

    1. Enabled WooCommerce option “Hide out of stock items from the catalog“
    2. Enabled WooCommerce option “Enable stock management“
    3. A variable product has enabled “Track stock quantity for this product” with a positive value or any value if “Allow backorders?” is enabled.?
    4. All variations have enabled “Manage stock?” and set a stock to zero or negative value.

    I can confirm that such a product will be displayed in the catalog. What is the practical justification for showing such a product in the catalog? I’m writing it from the perspective of a developer that develops a filtering plugin.?

    Arguments against displaying such products in the catalog:

    1. There is no physical representation of the product to buy because the parent product is only an abstraction, a container for variations. 
    2. The stock status of a parent product shouldn’t affect variations if every variation manages stock independently. WooCommerce even displays a warning “Settings below apply to all variations without manual stock management enabled”. But it’s not true.
    3. On the single product page is the message “This product is currently out of stock and unavailable.”
    4. WooCommerce has a product attributes lookup table. Every variation has “In stock” set to false in this table. 

    As a matter of common sense, such a product should be removed from the catalog. If all variations manage stock independently and are out of stock, the whole product should be all of stock. I would like to understand better why such a product is displayed in the catalog. Maybe there is something I missed. 

    In the FiboFilters plugin, we’re developing, we decided not to display such products in the catalog while WooCommerce displays them.?I would like to determine which path is more reasonable.

    Best
    Damian Góra
    https://fibofilters.com

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • Hi @damian-gora,

    Thank you for reaching out and for the detailed explanation. I understand how important it is to have a clear and functional catalog display. From what you’ve described, it seems that there’s a discrepancy between the expected behavior when the “Hide out of stock items from the catalog” option is enabled and the actual display of parent products with out-of-stock variations. Let’s work through this together.

    Firstly, it’s important to note that WooCommerce’s default behavior is to consider the stock status of the parent product when determining catalog visibility. This means that if the parent product is marked as in stock, it will appear in the catalog even if all variations are out of stock. The rationale behind this is to allow customers to view products that may soon be restocked or available for backorder.

    However, I understand your point that if all variations are out of stock, it might not make sense to display the parent product. For a more tailored approach to managing stock visibility, you might consider using a plugin like the Product Stock Manager.

    Let us know if there’s anything else we can help you with.

    Hi @afzalpansuvi – you may find this topic both interesting and extremely relevant.

    Issue with dynamic update of wp_wc_product_attributes_lookup | www.remarpro.com

    It will be great if that issue gets sorted too, because it has to do with the core of woocommerce. In our case, we invested months (together with the team at Fibosearch/Fibofilters) to make the fibofilters more robust, to just realise that
    1. The rules are open to misinterpretation.
    2. The wp_wc_product_attributes_lookup is getting corrupted during dynamic repopulation in shops that have 1000s of attributes (in products that have 100s of attributes).

    Plugin Support ckadenge (woo-hc)

    (@ckadenge)

    Hello @oxfordmetadata,

    Thanks for your input in this. I can see you already opened a new thread for your issue. One of us will soon reply to the open thread and assist you accordingly.

    In the meantime, I suggest keeping all conversations on the thread you just opened.

    Cheers!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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