Yesterday, I embarked on a seemingly straightforward customization journey for a WooCommerce store. Armed with Claude 3.7 Sonnet (an AI assistant from Anthropic), I tackled what initially appeared to be a simple enhancement but quickly turned into a valuable lesson in knowing when to change course.
The Goal: Reusing Attributes with Different Names
My idea was to reuse the same global attribute (specifically, a “colour” attribute with swatches) multiple times on a single product, but with different display names to indicate what component of the product the colour applied to.
For example, on a door product, I wanted to show “Frame Colour” and “Leaf Colour” as separate attributes, both using the same underlying colour taxonomy with the same terms and swatch settings. A reasonable enhancement, I thought.
Why Claude Was Theoretically Well-Suited for This Task
Claude 3.7 Sonnet seemed like an excellent choice for this technical challenge. It can write complete code snippets, understands WooCommerce extensions, and adapts solutions based on feedback – making it helpful for tackling custom development tasks.
Why This Would Be Valuable
This approach would have streamlined the website management experience for my client in several ways:
- Data Consistency: Maintaining a single source of truth for colour definitions
- Simplified Management: Adding or updating a colour would only need to happen once
- Efficient Filtering: Since all colour instances would link back to the same taxonomy, product filtering would work seamlessly
- Swatches Preservation: All the colour swatches would be inherited automatically
The Technical Challenges I Faced
My journey took several turns, each one more complex than the last:
- First, I created a custom panel in the WooCommerce product edit screen – this was relatively quick and easy, a few iterations going back and forth with Claude and it was working as expected
- Next, I tried to make these custom instances appear properly in the “Additional Information” tab – this is where things started going wrong
- Then, I wrestled with making the colour swatches from the “Product Variation Swatches for WooCommerce” plugin work with my custom instances
- Finally, realising that what I’d been trying to do might have been impossible even to the greatest human developer, I tried creating a script to simply duplicate entire attributes with all their values
Despite multiple iterations, I ran into persistent issues. The swatches plugin was tightly integrated with WooCommerce’s native attribute handling, and my custom attribute instances caused more conflicts than I’d anticipated. And it turns out that even allowing Attributes to be duplicated is not that straightforward.
Logistical Issues
It turns out that there were logistical as well as technical issues I had not initially foreseen with the idea of multiple attributes:
- Architecture Limitations: WooCommerce’s attribute system is fundamentally designed with a one-to-one relationship between an attribute and its appearance on products. There’s no native concept of “attribute instances.”]
- Database Structure: The underlying database schema doesn’t support multiple references to the same attribute taxonomy with different display names, making any workaround inherently hacky.
- Plugin Integration: Extensions like “Product Variation Swatches” are tightly coupled to WooCommerce’s attribute system, making them difficult to extend without breaking their functionality.
- Front-end Display Conflicts: Custom attribute instances would need to generate unique HTML IDs and classes without conflicting with the original attributes or each other.
- Query/Filtering Complexity: WooCommerce’s filtering system assumes unique attributes, making it challenging to handle multiple instances properly in product searches and navigation.
- Maintenance Burden: Any custom solution would require ongoing maintenance to ensure compatibility with WooCommerce updates and related plugins.
- Template Overrides: The solution would require overriding several WooCommerce templates, increasing the risk of incompatibility with theme updates.
- Validation Handling: WooCommerce’s validation systems aren’t designed to handle duplicate attributes, potentially causing integrity issues with the data.
When to Pivot: Recognizing Diminishing Returns
After several attempts, I reached that critical moment familiar to any developer – when you realize the solution is becoming more complex while also becoming less reliable. The code required to overcome each new obstacle was expanding rapidly, with diminishing prospects of success.
Lessons Learned
My experience offers several valuable takeaways:
- Understand System Boundaries: WooCommerce’s attribute system has specific limitations by design that are challenging to work around.
- Invest in Research and Planning: I should have spent more time researching WooCommerce’s attribute architecture and existing solutions before diving into development. A thorough understanding of the system’s constraints might have revealed earlier that this approach would be problematic, saving time and effort.
- Consider Alternative Approaches: Sometimes a simple manual solution is more efficient than complex automation that fights against the system’s architecture.
- Balance Convenience vs. Stability: The convenience of reusing attributes needs to be weighed against the stability and maintainability of the site.
- Know When to Cut Losses: Development is often an iterative process, but it’s important to recognize when it’s time to pursue a different strategy.
- Value the Exploration Process: Even “failed” attempts provide valuable insights into system behavior and limitations.
- AI Has Limitations Too: While Claude could generate sophisticated code solutions, it couldn’t overcome fundamental architectural constraints in WooCommerce.
Moving Forward
While I didn’t achieve my original technical goal, the journey itself was really informative. This was the first time I dived deeply into the process of interacting with an AI to try and develop some code. I now have not only a clearer understanding of WooCommerce’s attribute architecture and the tradeoffs involved in extending it, but also a good grasp on what it ‘feels’ like to use a tool like Claude Sonnet and actually, despite its limitations, I got a real glimpse of where it shines.
For this particular use case, I’ll likely be better served by:
- Creating separate attributes for each component, even if it means some duplication of terms
- Developing consistent naming conventions across products
- Accepting that sometimes the elegant solution isn’t worth the complexity it introduces
Sometimes the most sensible solution isn’t the cleverest one. In e-commerce, stability and reliability often trump ingenuity – a lesson that becomes clearer with each development challenge.
