Large Sample Data Set For WooCommerce

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I have often found that I need to spin up test instances for experimenting inside WooCommerce on a somewhat regular basis. In its standard install file, WooCommerce’s “sample data” file only has 25 SKU’s and 7 of those all are variations of two variable products, resulting in only about 18 actual product pages. This really isn’t enough to truly test with. So I set out to find a larger data set to work with / run testing environments with. For those who don’t know, developing dummy data / sample data from scratch really sucks. So I crossed my fingers hoping to find some e-commerce data that I could get my hands on. The key things for me were that the product data contained:

• • Product Name
  • Product SKU

• Product Description.
• Contained both variable and simple products
• Contained Multiple product attributes
• Contained Multiple Product Categories
• Has pricing
• Has sales pricing
• Used as little lorem ipsum text as possible.
• Has product images

This last point was honestly the hardest, as I have / had no desire to go searching from hundreds / thousands of quality images that properly relate to the product name and description.

I started looking at dummy data generators  (Like Mackaroo), but ultimately couldn’t get everything to line up and was still missing images. Then I tried working with a UPC library. I found a few of these (http://product-open-data.com/download), but the data with OSL licensing (i.e. free & sharable) was really inconsistent / dirty, and had lots of missing images which made it un reliable.

Finally I found the solution, that honestly I should have thought of to beginning with. Magento, which is another open-source option, also provides a sample data set like WooCommerce, but unlike WooCommerce’ theirs is far more robust and extensive. With 200ish variable (they call the configurable) products (Over 2000 SKU’s), and 50ish simple products. Here’s their GitHub of the sample data: https://github.com/magento/magento2-sample-data . The issue is that their import template wasn’t even close to the same a WooCommerce. In fact it uses a complier to take all the different pieces of data stored in different directories and files and compiles them during a special import module unique to their system. Also the scattered CSV files that they did have were not in the same template layout. Regardless, it had all the information in it so I felt I could work with it.

After about 5 hours of work I have got to the below file, which is a lot closer to what is required to import into WooCommerce. I recommend the WP All Import tool as it will be the best plugin you have ever bought and has lifetime updates, unlimited site licenses, and great support (I’m not affiliated with them, just love the tool and use it daily).  The source text and images are from Magento, but are listed as OSL licensing (check the GitHub referenced above for details) so I’m pretty sure that its safe to share and use – even in a different platform.

These two links are to a .csv and .xslx file to the same dataset: