Add new product categories programmatically in Woocommerce

Question

I am working on a Wordpress site and I am using Woocommerce, I have a lot of product category's and I would like to add them in the code and not in the Wordpress CMS itself.

Does anyone know how I can get into the code where I can add the category's. I have looked everywhere and I just cant find it even in the database. And also I would like to change my menu in the code because that would also be a lot less work.

Any help is appreciated.

LoicTheAztec · Answer 1 · 2018-11-24T18:34:22.607

Woocommerce Product category terms are a WordPress custom taxonomy product_cat…

In the database the data is located under the tables wp_terms, wp_term_taxonomy, wp_termmeta and wp_term_relationships too.

1) To add a new product category term programmatically you will use the dedicated WordPress function wp_insert_term() like:

// Adding the new product category as a child of an existing term (Optional) 
$parent_term = term_exists( 'fruits', 'product_cat' ); // array is returned if taxonomy is given

$term_data = wp_insert_term(
    'Apple', // the term 
    'product_cat', // the Woocommerce product category taxonomy
    array( // (optional)
        'description'=> 'This is a red apple.', // (optional)
        'slug' => 'apple', // optional
        'parent'=> $parent_term['term_id']  // (Optional) The parent numeric term id
    )
);

This will return the an array containing the term Id and the Term taxonomy Id like :

array('term_id'=>12,'term_taxonomy_id'=>34)

2) Menu Order: To set or even change the menu order of your product categories, you will use add_term_meta() Wordpress function.

You will need the term Id of your product category and the unique ordering numeric value (Here 2 for example):

add_term_meta( $term_data['term_id'], 'order', 2 );

3) Thumbnail: You will also use add_term_meta() to set a thumbnail ID to a product category using something like (where the last argument is the numeric thumbnail ID reference):

add_term_meta( $term_data['term_id'], 'thumbnail_id', 444 );

4) Set a product category in a product:

Now to set this new product category "Apple" to an existing product ID you will use something like (with the corresponding generated $term_id from new created "Apple" product category):

wp_set_post_terms( $product_id, array($term_data['term_id']), 'product_cat', true );

For reference: Function wp_set_post_terms()

Add new product categories programmatically in Woocommerce

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