"used for variations" switch programmatically - wordpress

Question

There are 860+ products with different variations. The task is to allow user bulk edit "used for variations" field for some attributes. For example, we have size, gender that is still needed for variations, but also we have material, that is needed for filters only, so deleting this attribute is not a solution.

Answer 1

Totally untested and not particularly ideal if you have a lot of products as it could time out, but theoretically you could loop through all the variable products and update the _product_attributes meta value. I highly suggest you have a data backup and/or do this is a staging site.
function so_41978670_run_once(){
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'product',
'posts_per_page' => -1,
'tax_query' => array(
array(
'taxonomy' => 'post_type',
'field' => 'slug',
'terms' => 'variable',
),
),
);
$products = new WP_Query( $args );
if( $products->have_posts() ){
while ( $products->have_posts() ) {
$products->the_post();
$product_id = get_the_ID();
$product = wc_get_product( $product_id );
$attributes = $product->get_attributes();
$meta_values = array();
if ( $attributes ) {
foreach ( $attributes as $attribute_key => $attribute ) {
if( in_array( $attribute_key, array( 'size', 'gender' ) ) ){
// Modify the attributes meta.
$attributes[ $attribute_key ]['is_variation'] = 1;
}
}
}
update_post_meta( $product->get_id(), '_product_attributes', $attributes );
}
wp_reset_postdata();
}
}
Potential update for WooCommerce 3.0 CRUD functions, but still untested:
function so_41978670_run_once() {
$args = array(
'limit' => -1,
'type' => 'variable',
);
$products = wc_get_products( $args );
if( ! empty ( $products ) ) {
foreach ( $products as $product ) {
$attributes = $product->get_attributes();
if ( $attributes ) {
foreach ( $attributes as $attribute_key => $attribute ) {
if( in_array( $attribute_key, array( 'size', 'gender' ) ) ){
// Modify the attribute settings.
$attribute->set_variation( true );
}
}
}
$product->set_attributes( $attributes );
$product->save();
}
}
}
add_action( 'admin_init', 'so_41978670_run_once' );