By default, WooCommerce external products do not have and do not display any stock, as they are simple redirects to an external URL. This may be unfortunate, because before clicking on an external URL and send people away from your website, you may want to make sure the current item is in stock (so that you have more chances to convert the sale and earn a referral commission, if that’s your business model).
So, how do we “manage stock” for an external product, and display the stock status on the single product page, just before the “Buy Product” button?
I’m now able to show the stock status for WooCommerce external/affiliate products as well! Just store the status in a custom field, and the snippet below will do the rest.
PHP Snippet: Show Stock Availability @ WooCommerce Single External Product Page
Before you use the snippet below, you first need to “set” the external product stock status via a custom field that we’ll call “extstock“. I set its value to either 1 (in stock) or 0 (out of stock). You can of course rename it to whatever you want it, redefine values, use it as stock quantity as opposed to stock status, and even “get” it from another custom field defined by a plugin:
I’m on the single product page for an external product, and I’ve just manually added a new custom field called “extstock” with a value of 1. I will need this in the snippet below to find out the stock status, so that I can display it on the frontend. /** * @snippet External Product Stock Status @ WooCommerce Single Product * @how-to Get CustomizeWoo.com FREE * @author Rodolfo Melogli * @compatible WooCommerce 7 * @donate $9 https://businessbloomer.com/bloomer-armada/ */ add_action( ‘woocommerce_external_add_to_cart’, ‘bbloomer_external_product_stock’, 29 ); function bbloomer_external_product_stock() { global $product; $stock_status = get_post_meta( $product->get_id(), ‘extstock’, true ); if ( ! $stock_status ) return; if ( $stock_status == 1 ) { $availability = __( ‘In stock’, ‘woocommerce’ ); $class = ‘in-stock’; } else { $availability = __( ‘Out of stock’, ‘woocommerce’ ); $class = ‘out-of-stock’; } wc_get_template( ‘single-product/stock.php’, array( ‘product’ => $product, ‘class’ => $class, ‘availability’ => $availability, ) ); }
Where to add this snippet?
You can place PHP snippets at the bottom of your child theme functions.php file (delete “?>” if you have it there). CSS, on the other hand, goes in your child theme style.css file. Make sure you know what you are doing when editing such files – if you need more guidance, please take a look at my free video tutorial “Where to Place WooCommerce Customization?”
Does this snippet (still) work?
Please let me know in the comments if everything worked as expected. I would be happy to revise the snippet if you report otherwise (please provide screenshots). I have tested this code with Storefront theme, the WooCommerce version listed above and a WordPress-friendly hosting on PHP 7.3.
If you think this code saved you time & money, feel free to join 14,000+ WooCommerce Weekly subscribers for blog post updates or 250+ Business Bloomer supporters for 365 days of WooCommerce benefits. Thank you in advance 🙂
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Rodolfo Melogli
Business Bloomer Founder
Author, WooCommerce expert and WordCamp speaker, Rodolfo has worked as an independent WooCommerce freelancer since 2011. His goal is to help entrepreneurs and developers overcome their WooCommerce nightmares. Rodolfo loves travelling, chasing tennis & soccer balls and, of course, wood fired oven pizza.
