WooCommerce is bringing custom tables to the core plugin

WooCommerce has announced that its team has embarked on a development mission to bring custom tables for WooCommerce entities like products, orders, coupons, etc.

WooCommerce custom tables

In a post published on the plan for custom tables, WooCommerce says that it has always wanted to implement custom tables but shied away from doing so because of the complexity of making such changes. Now WooComerce is ready to work on the project and targets to complete the early implementation by the start of Q3 2022.

Data Storage

WooCommerce has been utilizing the  wp_post and wp_postmeta table structures used by WordPress to store information.

With the introduction of custom tables, WooCommee is bringing tables that are dedicated to WC data storage. The tables will be structured into three main groups;

• Core table:  For data stored from WooCommerce Core
• Additional Plugin table: For data stored from WoCommerce third party plugins
• Meta table: For storage of one-off values

What will happen to previous data?

WooCommerce says they will keep the custom table features opt-in to give users time to ensure that their shops are compatible. If you opt-in and things break, you can opt-out (in the early WooCommerce version).

It should be noted this is a draft proposal and a lot is likely to change. We will provide updates in case of any changes and when custom tables are ready for testing and release.

You can follow WoCommerce custom table project progress on Github.