WooCommerce is a powerful e-commerce plugin for WordPress that provides a wide range of features and functionalities to create and manage online stores. While WooCommerce offers various built-in filters to refine product searches, you may have specific requirements that call for custom filters. In this article, we will explore how to add a custom filter to WooCommerce through code, enabling you to tailor product searches according to your unique needs.
Before diving into the code, it’s essential to understand the WooCommerce product query. WooCommerce uses the WP_Query class to fetch products based on various parameters such as categories, tags, attributes, and search keywords. By modifying this query, we can add custom filters to manipulate the product search results.
Hooking into the woocommerce_product_query Filter:
To add a custom filter, we’ll use the woocommerce_product_query filter hook, which allows us to modify the product query before it is executed. By leveraging this filter, we can inject our custom logic to refine the search results.
Implementing the Custom Filter:
Let’s now dive into the code to implement our custom filter. We’ll start by adding a custom function and hooking it into the woocommerce_product_query filter.
function custom_product_filter($q){
// Check if the filter parameter is set
if (isset($_GET[‘custom_filter’])) {
$custom_filter = sanitize_text_field($_GET[‘custom_filter’]);
// Modify the product query based on your custom filter
// Example: Filtering by product title
$q->set(‘s’, $custom_filter);
}
}
add_action(‘woocommerce_product_query’, ‘custom_product_filter’);
In this code snippet, we create the custom_product_filter function, which accepts the product query object ($q) as a parameter. Inside the function, we check if our custom filter parameter, named custom_filter, is set in the URL query string using $_GET. We then sanitize the input using sanitize_text_field to ensure security and prevent malicious code injection.
Next, we modify the product query by calling the set method on the $q object. In this example, we set the search parameter (s) to the sanitized value of custom_filter. This example demonstrates filtering products by title, but you can adjust the query to match your specific requirements.
Implementing the Custom Filter in Your Theme or Plugin:
To make the custom filter available in your WooCommerce store, you need to include the code snippet in your theme or plugin. You can add the code to your theme’s functions.php file or create a custom plugin for your modifications.
For theme-based modifications, locate the functions.php file within your active theme’s directory. Open the file using a text editor and paste the code snippet at the end of the file, just before the closing PHP tag (?>), if it exists.
If you prefer using a custom plugin, create a new PHP file, and insert the code snippet. Save the file with a .php extension and place it within the wp-content/plugins/ directory of your WordPress installation. Then, activate the plugin from the WordPress admin panel.
By harnessing the power of the woocommerce_product_query filter hook, we can easily add custom filters to WooCommerce. This flexibility allows you to tailor the product search experience for your online store, providing customers with more accurate and relevant results. Whether you need to filter products by title, attributes, or any other custom parameter, the ability to customize filters through code empowers you to create a personalized and efficient shopping experience.
