WooCommerce: Split cart items from the same order and ship via multiple shipping methods

April 29, 2018 at 11:37 am

WooCommerce: Split cart items from the same order and ship via multiple shipping methods

By Business Case, Documentation, Generic, WooCommerce 26 Comments

The Below Code Works for the Following Plugins:

First things first :).
Product Vendors is a WordPress plugin which will enable marketplace capabilities for WooCommerce.

The Problem to Solve.

Let me explain about the problem we have faced after turning a WooCommerce store to the marketplace. When the customer adds a number of products from various vendors to the cart, shipping options will be shown common for all those cart items. That is the default way WooCommerce handles it. But, there is a high possibility that customer wants to save some money by opting for a local pickup from Vendor A, who is located in the same area and choose a different shipping method for Vendor B.

Prior to WooCommerce 2.1, this problem was not solvable straight as each order had to be shipped using a single shipping method with a single total price. But, from 2.1 onwards, those cart items can be split and grouped separately as different packages and can be shipped individually by using different shipping methods. These packages can be created by various logical groupings of cart items, as a product vendor, product category, cost, etc.

However, we can focus on how the package can be split into packaging items with respect to each Product Vendor. Before getting into implementation details, you can take a look at the screenshot below this article to see how the shipping section of cart page will look like. after the vendor-wise split of packages.

Each Order is a Package!

Each order is considered as the package from WooCommerce 2.1 onwards. The structure of package object is described below.

ship_via --> Associate shipping method with the package.
contents --> Array of cart_contents from WC_Cart object.

Remaining fields are self-explanatory.

    //'ship_via' => array( 'flat_rate' ),
    'contents' => $vendor_items,
    'contents_cost' => array_sum( wp_list_pluck( $vendor_items, 'line_total' ) ),
    'applied_coupons' => WC()->cart->applied_coupons,
    'destination' => array(
        'country' => WC()->customer->get_shipping_country(),
        'state' => WC()->customer->get_shipping_state(),
        'postcode' => WC()->customer->get_shipping_postcode(),
        'city' => WC()->customer->get_shipping_city(),
        'address' => WC()->customer->get_shipping_address(),
        'address_2' => WC()->customer->get_shipping_address_2()

Once items are added to the cart, the package can be filtered using the hook woocommerce_cart_shipping_packages. We will have the package object ready for the split at this point.

add_filter( 'woocommerce_cart_shipping_packages', array( &$this, 'th_woocommerce_cart_shipping_packages') );

Product Vendors plugin allows associating each product with multiple vendors. I am still unsure about the actual benefit of such flexibility. But, for our use case, each product will be only associated with the single vendor.

Below part of the code is specific to Vendor-wise split. Basically, a map will be built, which will have a mapping between Vendor ID and an array of cart items associated with the vendor.

    $vendor_items_map = array();
    foreach ( WC()->cart->get_cart() as $item ) {
        $product_id = $item['product_id'];
                // Get vendors for each product.
        $vendors = get_product_vendors( $product_id  );
        if ( $item['data']->needs_shipping() ) {
            if($vendors) {
                foreach( $vendors as $vendor ) {
                    // Expecting/assuming there is only one Vendor assigned per product. Hm.
                    $vendor_items_map[$vendor->ID][] = $item;
                    break;
                }
            }
            // No vendor associated with the item.
            else {
                $vendor_items_map['0'][] = $item;
            }
        }
    }

Here is the heart of the package split. An array of packages will be built where each index will have a package associated with individual vendor. Each package contents will be associated with the array of items from vendor_items_map. Note that all these items split into packages will be part of the single order.

    foreach($vendor_items_map as $key => $vendor_items) {
        $packages[] = array(
            //'ship_via' => array( 'flat_rate' ),
            'contents' => $vendor_items,
            'contents_cost' => array_sum( wp_list_pluck( $vendor_items, 'line_total' ) ),
            'applied_coupons' => WC()->cart->applied_coupons,
            'destination' => array(
                'country' => WC()->customer->get_shipping_country(),
                'state' => WC()->customer->get_shipping_state(),
                'postcode' => WC()->customer->get_shipping_postcode(),
                'city' => WC()->customer->get_shipping_city(),
                'address' => WC()->customer->get_shipping_address(),
                'address_2' => WC()->customer->get_shipping_address_2()
            )
        );    
    }

The Product Vendor Use Case.

See the below list of items from a cart page. Here, the customer purchased multiple items from various vendors. Travel Box and Jute Bag belongs to Vendor 1 and Red Jacket belongs to Vendor 2. Paint doesn’t belong to any Vendor which is directly sold by marketplace owner.

Cart

And here is how shipping section will look like. Notice the vendor-wise split of shipping options. The customer is free to select desired shipping method for each vendor.

There is a catch here. The labels for each package will be displayed as Shipping #1, Shipping #2, etc. At this point of time (WooCommerce 2.3.4), the product packaging code doesn’t look matured as there is any hook present in the template cart-shipping.php, to replace vendor name instead of currently numbered shipping package labels. But, how in the below screenshot you are able to see vendor names across package labels!? Simple..I have overridden the template cart-shipping in my plugin code and changed it.

Cart Total

Solved!

Go Gist!

Here is the GitHub snippet of complete code for reference.

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