v1.3.0 is now in beta

Over the last month or so I’ve been working on bringing more support for WooCommerce into GB Query Enhancements. This release is chock full of great features for doing queries in WooCommerce including around 22 new dynamic tags specifically for WooCommerce. The beta is available to download in your account and you can also opt-in to development updates in your plugin settings if you want to receive the latest updates (note: do not do this for production sites).

This release brings WooCommerce loop features, the new Meta Query Builder, and the ability to preview the final query PHP. You can read the full changelog below:

New Query Type: WooCommerce

GenerateBlocks has always had the ability to do a Product query out of the box since WooCommerce products are a custom post type. However, WooCommerce Variations aren’t included in those queries so you can only loop over the top level products. While Variations are also a custom post type, they’re marked as hidden when they’re registered. This causes them to not be included in the list of available post types when you query the WP REST API, which is what GenerateBlocks is using to get those choices.

My solution was to create a single query type that is dedicated to WooCommerce things so you can easily choose between a WooCommerce Product or Variation query and everything else is fully dialed in around WooCommerce changes. Some of this functionality is subject to change as this is a beta but I think there’s a solid foundation with some good ideas and overall improvements (with undoubtedly more still to come).

Now when you type /woo you’ll see a variation available for WooCommerce Products or WooCommerce Product Categories.

The former will create a WooCommerce loop and the other will create a Term Query that targets the product_cat taxonomy used by WooCommerce. Both of which are fully customizable.

If you were to choose one of the Product choices, you’ll see the blocks configured for you with all of the standard product query options available. All parameters for the PHP version of the product query (WC_Product_Query) should be supported.

When you choose a preset, it’s effectively configuring multiple settings for you at once (like a shortcut). From there you can customize the settings however you want. I think of these as a step between needing an entire pattern for something and having a simple “most of the way there” set of starting points.

I would expect some further refinements and adjustments to these before the final release.

Variation Groups

One feature I’m super excited about is the Variation Query Group mode. This allows you to do some really neat stuff like group variations by a primary attribute (such as color). This type of layout is very common with clothing stores if they sell the same item in multiple colors and sizes.

New WooCommerce Dynamic Tags

This release includes a number of additional dynamic tags that you can use to display information about your products, even outside of Query loops. When you combine these with the loop_item tag (included in GB Pro) you can effectively get any useful piece of information about a product or variant you could possibly want (if I left anything major out, tell me!).

Here’s the full list:

• product_price
• product_regular_price
• product_sale_price
• product_sku
• product_stock_status
• product_stock_quantity
• product_rating
• product_review_count
• product_add_to_cart_url
• product_add_to_cart_text
• product_image_url
• product_gallery
• product_weight
• product_dimensions
• product_on_sale
• product_attribute
• product_title
• product_variation_description
• product_category_image_url
• product_url
• product_option
• product_options

I want to call out a few tags in particular to highlight some features they have:

product_title
You can choose to use the full title, attributes only, or the base title (no attributes). Additionally you can choose to automatically append the chosen Primary Attribute for a variation. This allows you to include the primary attribute inside the product title link without any extra hacks or weirdness.

product_option
This allows you to output a given attribute’s value. You can also use the primary and secondary keywords to automatically grab the primary or secondary attribute for the loop you’re in. This type of thing is very useful when you’re displaying tables or lists of variations.

product_rating
You can display a rating in numeric terms (i.e. 1,2, 4.5, 5, etc) or in stars. You can choose to use native WooCommerce output instead of the CSS from GB Query Enhancements too. However, those styles only load on WooCommerce pages so the default is the plugin’s own output to ensure broader compatibility.

Meta Query Builder

Query Previews

This feature is simple but I hope many will find it useful! As I’ve built this plugin, I wanted to have a simple way to see what the final resulting PHP for a given query was (after all filters and other customizations). Now the Query Block includes a “View Query PHP” link which will open a modal that shows you the final resulting PHP that will be used in your query.

You could copy this directly out of here and insert it into your own PHP code and it would work just the same!

Additionally you can access this from the Query block toolbar:

This feature is available at the block level so you can use it with any query type including the ones that ship with GenerateBlocks already.

Additional Fixes and Improvements

A number of various technical bugs and UX improvements have been made. I’m working hard to make this the best experience possible and I’m experimenting with some new ideas to make this tool better and easier to use for everyone, no matter your use case.

As such, I’d appreciate any feedback on the release! I can’t promise I’ll do everything requested, but I’ll absolutely listen to and consider every idea.