Shopp handles really well the product variations: for instance you will find a unique feature called "Link All Variations" giving you the abillity to tie all the variations together. Once this option is selected, if you change let's say the price of a variation, all the other prices will change too. Really neat for productivity!



On the front office, the customer will see the variations in drop-down menus.
All this is well done, but one thing is missing: you can't display the stock availability for each variation.

For me this was a real problem. Of course Shopp is handling the inventory of your products & variations with SKU and all those things. But you can't display the stock if you have variations. Even without variations, this isn't an "Out of the box" feature...

The solution

Shopp gives us the possibility to use themes in order to display our products in Wordpress. It's as easy as creating a "shopp" folder in your Wordpress theme and to activate custom theme for Shopp in the back-office.

That's a nice move because it will allow you to update Shopp without erasing your own theme's modifications. Shopp will warn you in the back-office if a file is missing after an update (if the developpers introduce a new file for instance). Keep in mind you will still have to be carefull about the possible changes in the API or the provided tags...

Now you should have a bunch of files in this folder. Open "product.php" in your favorite text editor (or in Dreamweaver or in any other software you're using to edit php files).

Place this after the line 45, just after the <?php endif; ?>

<!-- Variations list with stock -->
<?php if(shopp('product','has-variations')): ?>
<h3>Product availability :</h3><br />
<?php
//echo "<p>".print_r($Shopp->Product->prices)."</p>"; // See the entire array
for($i=1; $i < count($Shopp->Product->prices); ++$i) {
if($Shopp->Product->prices[$i]->sku) {
list($label0) = split(", ", $Shopp->Product->prices[1]->label); // Just gives the very first variation
list($label1, $label2, $label3, $label4) = split(", ", $Shopp->Product->prices[$i]->label); // Split the variations (only 4)
list($label11, $label22, $label33, $label44) = split(", ", $Shopp->Product->prices[$i+1]->label); // Split the next coming variations in the list to compare
if($i == 1) echo "<ul class='stock'>\n<li><span class='vlabel'>".$label0."</span></li>\n"; // Start the list with the first variation
$stock = $Shopp->Product->prices[$i]->stock; // Gives the stock for each variation
// If the stock = 0 => gives a link to open a mail box to make a request for this product
// REPLACE your@mail.com WITH YOUR EMAIL
if(!$stock){ $stock = "0 <a href='mailto:your@mail.com?subject=Product request: ".$Shopp->Product->name." - SKU: ".$Shopp->Product->prices[$i]->sku."&body=Please give us your first and last name below. We will contact you as soon as this product is available. Thanks!' title='I need this stuff!'>Request this product</a> ?"; }
// Variations list contruction in <li>
$variations = "<li><span class='vlabels'>";
if($label2) $variations .= $label2;
if($label3) $variations .= "+". $label3;
if($label4) $variations .= "+". $label4;
$variations .= " (".$stock.") </span></li>\n";
echo $variations;
// If the first variation is different from the next first one, then close list </ul> and start another <ul>
if($label1 != $label11) {
if($label11) echo "</ul>\n<ul class='stock'>\n<li><span class='vlabel'>".$label11."</span></li>\n";
}
}
}
?>
</ul> <!-- Close de very last list -->
<?php else: ?>
<?php if($Shopp->Product->prices[0]->stock != 0): ?>
<h3>Disponibilité de ce produit : <?php echo $Shopp->Product->prices[0]->stock; ?></h3><br />
<?php endif; ?>
<?php endif; ?>
<!-- End Variations list with stock -->

So, this is not the best code ever, but it works.

Basically this patch takes the 4 first variations of a product and it displays them in a nested list with the stock at the end of each line. If you have more than 4 variations, only the 4 first ones will be displayed. (Honestly 4 variations per product should be enough. With more than that you would have some problems with Shopp anyway...).

As you can see, I've added a css class for the first option (vlabel) and another class for the rest (vlabels). This will help us to style the list in the next step.

Styling the nested list

In Shopp you need to choose the first variation to access the second one, to choose a second variation to access the third one, etc... The first variation should be the most important and acts as a title, hence why I will give it a special style. The rest of the list will be put on the same line in order to reduce the place a long list could take.

.stock { /* container */
clear: both;
}
.stock li { /* global style */
display: inline;
font-size: 11px;
}
.vlabel { /* first variation */
background-color: #ccc;
padding: 5px 6px 5px 6px;
 -moz-border-radius: 5px;
 -khtml-border-radius: 5px;
 -webkit-border-radius: 5px;
 border-radius: 5px;
}
.vlabels { /* second variation */
line-height: 30px;
margin-left: 5px;
}

As you can see in the image above, the first variation has a small background with rounded corners (css3). Of course you can style the list like you want, it's just an exemple... You may have to change the css to fit in your template.

So, I hope this quick tutorial will help you to display your products variations.
Let me know if you found it usefull, comprehensible or if you think something would help.