How to add ISBN13 as global product attribute

I want to add books product. I thought global custom attributes would be best to add isbn13, isbn10, pages, author, publisher and published date.

But when I created those custom attributes globally via products > attributes menu, I found that these global attributes just accept multiselect option types, not accepting string type during adding a product.

I have used magento as well, in which you can add attributes types as well. I think it’s crucial functionality missing from woocommerce.

If I am missing something, please help.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by itsgauravjain22.

I dig through it and found that global product attributes text type are removed in version 3.3 without providing any proper solution. Adding local text product attributes again and again would be a pain as well as it would be prone to data inconsistency.

Could someone point me to create product attribute, or meta term so that I could define the fixed name and slug to attribute with different text assigned value to this attribute.
For example: How to add a “book-total-pages”‘ as attribute slug pre-defined with name “Book Total Pages”, which accept a text input in admin section.

Adding “Books Total Pages” again and again as a local product attribute is a mess and is highly inconsistent. What if someone added just “Pages” as a new local attribute to another product, intending for the same use.

Hi @itsgauravjain22,

If I understand correctly, you are trying to add global attributes? Here’s documentation on how to do so, which is still available in the most recent version of WooCommerce: https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/managing-product-taxonomies/#set-global-attributes

If you’re looking for an ISN specific plugin, one such as this may point you in the right direction: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/product-gtin-ean-upc-isbn-for-woocommerce/

Thanks @yukikatayama for the reply. The reason for comment is to have support for text type product attribute, which are just plain text not a taxonomies of a product. For eg. A field required for “books total pages” as plain text. It’s not a product taxonomy, but its a product attribute.

Well I could add “books total pages” as global product attribute. I was concerned about the performance because in that way I am inherently call inherently making a product as taxonomy and resulting in abusing the system. The default woocommerce don’t have support for creating plain text fields as product attributes.

This link would give be helpful for others. The currently suggested method is to create text attribute as custom fields or create a new product type which has predefined custom fields. For eg. books.

I have suggested the correct devs what is missing in woocommerce. I hope they will implement the change.

https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/issues/18045#issuecomment-598433211