[SOLVED] Set the highest priced variation as default in WooCommerce variable products

Set the highest priced variation as default in WooCommerce variable products

I have a lots of products with variations in my WooCommerce installation. None of them are pre-selected as default when user browses to any product page.

Manually selecting them would be a tedious job. Additionally, new products and variations are imported automatically on a daily basis using an SQL script.

I would like to have pre-selected product variation with the highest price for any user that browses to any product page which has variable product.

How can that be done?

Solution

Update - 2023 (code simplification and optimization)

Here it is an automated solution, that will do the job one time, each time a variable product is called/browse by a customer.

The variable product will be updated with a default variation that has the highest price.

This will be done once only, as I set a custom post meta key/value each time a variable product has been updated.

The code:

add_action( 'template_redirect', 'set_default_variation_job' );
function set_default_variation_job() {
    if ( ! is_product() || is_admin() ) return;
    
    $product_id = get_the_ID();
    $product    = wc_get_product($product_id); // Get the variable product object

    if( ! is_a( $product, 'WC_Product' ) return; // Exit if is not a product object

    // Only for variable products & Check if default variation has been updated
    if ( $product->is_type( 'variable' ) && ! $product->get_meta('_default_variation_updated') ) {

        $active_prices  = $product->get_variation_prices()['price']; // Array of variation Id / active price pairs
        $variations_ids = array_keys($active_prices); // Array of variations IDs
        $variation_id   = end($variations_ids); // Get the variation with the highest price

        $variation = wc_get_product( $variation_id ); // Get an instance of the WC_Product_Variation object
        $default_attributes = $variation->get_variation_attributes(false); // Get formatted variation attributes         
        
        // Set the default variation attributes in the Variable product
        $product->set_default_attributes( $default_attributes );

        // Set a meta data flag to avoid update repetitions
        $product->update_meta_data('_default_variation_updated', '1');
        $product->save(); // Save the data
    }
}

Code goes in functions.php file of your child theme (or in a plugin). Tested and works.