You don’t have to have variations for all the permutations of your attributes, just the ones you supply. However that would add a shape dropdown with only one entry which you probably don’t want.
Could you not put both words in the attributes:
red (square) | yellow (round) | blue (triangle)
Or maybe put the shape information in a table in the product description.
The “shape” attribute was just an example. In reality I have several attributes similar to it that are static or different to each variation.
Essentially it’s just production information specific to the variation but I don’t want to just put it into the description as a formatted info. I want them to be separate fields/custom attributes so I can filter and do other queries with them. Some of the information may overlap, but it doesn’t mean it’s a variation on it’s own.
For example:
RED variation
- Size: 10 x 8 x 8
- Capacity: 5 cubic inches
- Amount per skid: 1,000
YELLOW variation
- Size: 12 x 10 x 10
- Capacity: 8 cubic inches
- Amount per skid: 1,000
BLUE variation
- Size: 12 x 10 x 10
- Capacity: 8 cubic inches
- Amount per skid: 1,500
I’m not sure yet, but I think what I need is to add custom FIELDS to the product variations:
http://www.remicorson.com/woocommerce-custom-fields-for-variations/
and this article has a demo of it in action:
http://blueskysessions.com/2014/03/31/woocommerce-display-dynamic-content-per-the-selected-product-variation/
So rather than add custom ATTRIBUTES, I would add custom FIELDS to each variation. I’m not sure this is the best solution yet, but so far it’s the closest to what I need to achieve.
After testing out the custom fields in variations, this is the solution I needed.
Unfortunately I had to do it manually so the code isn’t very re-usable. After the project is complete, I may spend some time and convert it to a plugin so it’s not specific to the custom theme I’m making.
