Well, in a sense the DB keeps track of all products added. Getting it to tell you what you need to know can be a challenge. It’s possible to check for exact duplicates. A variation in the assigned title could result in the same product occurring twice because it’s not an exact match. Is there any field that unequivocally indicates replication? A SKU or product ID or the like? More generally, how can we know when a duplicate is being added? What can we use for reliable comparison?
A hook in the save product process could search for a match and kill the process when found. That would mean needlessly entering product data though. There is a process that runs to ensure the assigned slug does not exist, adding a sequence number if it exists. This could catch duplicates before much time is spent entering data. It’s harder to implement though. I don’t think there’s a handy hook. You’d need to add another callback to the Ajax request to do the search. I don’t know how a match would be communicated back.
Probably better is to do your own Ajax as soon as the field used to determine a match has data. Then your script can put up an alert box or something. Sorry for rambling solutions, thinking out loud as I type. I’m unaware of any plugins for this, but that does not mean there are none.
Firstly
Thank you bcworkz for an expanded reply to my question. I think the answer lies in the DB. If I can find something to watch the database and alert me wDUPLICATION ALERT when I get two products with the same description. But what.
Perhaps the way to go is find a Coder and get him to knock up a bit of code for such an occasion.
Anyway thanks very much for stopping by and replying.
You’re welcome. Getting a pro to work up something for you is always a good option. Just in case you need a couple ideas for where to find competent coders who know WP, you can try jobs.wordpress.net or jetpack.pro.
