Bulk create WooCommerce products programmatically

Question

It is possible to bulk create products on WooCommerce? I am using the wp-cli Product command but it seems that I have to create one by one.

<?php

$products = array(
    array('title' => 'My product 1'),
    array('title' => 'My product 2'),
    // ...
    // 10.000 more products
);

foreach ($products as $product) {
    $cliProduct = new WC_CLI_Product();
    $cliProduct->create(array(), $product);
    WP_CLI::success("Added Product #{$product['title']}");
}

This takes a lot of time since it is going to make a query for each product, even worse, it is going to be a cron job that will be run regularly. I also have to check if the product exist, in that case, update it instead of create a new product.

So the number of queries will be multiplied by 2.

Product Exists? Update it, else Create it

Is there a better way to do this? Maybe I should query the database directly, but it looks dirty.

Is there any WP function to query the database without having to create my own DB connection?

Answer 1

For WooCommerce Version 3.0 or above.

Assuming you have an array like this and you have Unique SKU to identify product.

$products = [
    0 => [
        'title' => 'My Simple product 1',
        'sku' => 'sku1',
        'category_ids' => [23,45]
    //...
    //...
    ],
    1 => [
        'title' => 'My Simple product 1',
        'sku' => 'sku1'
    //...
    //...
    ]
];

Pass the above array through wh_myCustomProduct() method.

function wh_myCustomProduct($product_array)
{
    if (!empty($product_array)):
        foreach ($product_array as $product):
            $product_id = wc_get_product_id_by_sku($product['sku']);
            //no product exist with the given SKU so create one
            if (empty($product_id)):
                
                $product_id = wh_createOrUpdateProduct($product);
            //product found
            else:
                
                $product_id = wh_createOrUpdateProduct($product,$product_id);
            endif;

        endforeach;
    endif;
}

function wh_createOrUpdateProduct($product, $productId = 0){
    $objProduct = new WC_Product($productId);
    $objProduct->set_sku($product['id']); //Set product SKU.
    $objProduct->set_name($product['title']); //Set product name.
    $objProduct->set_description($product['description']); //Set product description.
    $objProduct->set_description($product['price']); //Set product price.


    $objProduct->set_category_ids($product['category_ids']); //Set product category ID.

    $objProduct->set_stock_status('instock');
    $objProduct->set_manage_stock(true); //Set true if you want WooCommerce to manage your stock
    $objProduct->set_stock_quantity($product['rating']['count']); //Set product stock qty.
    $objProduct->set_status('publish'); //Set product status

    $productID = $objProduct->save(); //Saving the data to create new product, it will return product ID.
    return $productID;
}

Hope this helps!

Reference:

• This is the WooCommerce official doc
• You can also refer to this article where I have explained in detail how to use Product CRUD

Related:

• https://stackoverflow.com/a/71548224/5019802