Background of the issue:
I am trying to resolve an issue similar to the one described in this forum post: https://wpml.org/forums/topic/duplicate-bookings-with-woocommerce-bookings/. I am using WooCommerce Multilingual & Multicurrency 5.4.5 with two languages: French as the default and English as the secondary. Bookings are created in both languages, and English booking posts have their post_meta set with _booking_duplicate_of=id_of_french_one and _language_code=en.
Symptoms:
All booking translations appear on the French side, creating duplicates and filling booking spots with duplicates. This prevents customers from booking slots that are artificially fully booked.
It appears translations aren't filtered out (on product pages and on Bookings/Calendar)
Questions:
Why are all booking translations appearing on the French side?
How can I prevent duplicate bookings from filling booking spots?
While waiting for your team to take this ticket, I dug deeper in DB, and found the following.
We do not translate Booking products. They are classes given in one language: we do not want to display classes in French on the English side of the website (or worse, allow clients to book a class given a language they do not speak). This has been working properly for years now.
In the attached screenshot:
- the booking #94121 is translated but not duplicated
- the booking #96942 is duplicated (holds two slots on the product availability for this date, appears twice in the booking calendar on the French side)
Taking a look at meta_id 1261852, you can see that _booking_product_id has been set to the id of the French product (instead of being null as this product hasn't been translated to English/has no English version/product_id).
Setting the meta entry above to null fixes the issue for this booking.
My understanding:
- calendar display and slots' availability disregard the existence of _booking_duplicate_of and instead list all bookings having a French _booking_product_id
- a new version of Woocommerce Multilingual / Woocommerce bookings (release between fall 2024 and march 25th, 2025) now sets _booking_product_id to the product of the default language when no translated product exists and thus introduced this bug.
Can you help me find the source of this/share this with the Woocommerce Mutlilingual dev in charge of the Woocommerce Bookings Compatibility integration?
Can you please assign this ticket to a supporter/share this with the WooCommerce Multilingual dev in charge of the WooCommerce Bookings Compatibility integration?
I apologize for the delay in responding. I will take care of this ticket; the reply time will be shorter now.
There are two things here:
1. The booking post
2. The booking orders
When a user buys a booking, an order in each language is created. This is expected, and it is how the integration works. This allows for avoiding having two bookings (or one per language) on the same spot.
So, if this is what you are seeing, it's expected. If a user booked a spot in English, the same spot can't be booked in French.
This important to this case: our WooCommerce booking products aren't translated/not linked to a translation/do not need being disconnected.
The issue is that the translated bookings (the actual bookings, not the product), still get translated (with a _booking_duplicate_of post_meta created) but also get a _booking_product_id set to the original booking product (in the original language, French in my example).
This creates a duplicate booking on the French side (see example in the attached screenshot).
Even though _booking_duplicate_of is set to the original (French) booking id and _language_code is properly set to 'en', the English translation appears on the French calendar and blocks a spot.
My understanding is that, as no English booking product exists, the post_meta _booking_product_id for the English translation is erroneously set to the French booking id. This leads bot French and English booking posts to being counted as separate one and both appear on the French calendar.
So we loose two spots every time one is purchased / our classes are "fully booked" when half the spots have been sold.
Can you share this with the Woocommerce Mutlilingual dev in charge of the Woocommerce Bookings Compatibility integration?
To escalate the issue, we first need to reproduce it from scratch.
I created a clean installation of WordPress, WooCommerce, WooCommerce Bookings, WPML, and all necessary WPML add-ons.
You can access the WordPress dashboard using the link below: hidden link
Kindly follow the steps below:
- Don't restore your site there.
- Try to replicate the issue with minimal steps.
- Then let me know the steps to see the problem and reproduce it.
Walkthrough:
- set French as default language in WPML
- created a bookable virtual product, with hourly blocks and max 2 bookings per block
- booked 1 block (may 30th at 12AM) and placed the order
- 2 duplicates appear in the calendar (3 bookings instead of one) and that block is now full instead of having one available block left
You can see the bug there (and in the attached screenshots):
1) The (single) booking appears 3 times in the calendar (as the sandbox was set with 3 languages). hidden link
2) The (single) booking is counted as three: there's no more availability on May 30th at 12:00am (this slot is now hidden on the booking page) hidden link
Here are three ways to fix this:
1) Easy&quick "revert back to the old way the WPML behaved": do not add _booking_product_id and _booking_resource_id post_meta pointing to the default language product and resource to translated bookings when the bookable product/resource is not translated
2) Logical one in continuity of the way WPML has been developing this intergration: Properly filter out translated bookings having _booking_duplicate_of post_meta when retrieving list of bookings in the calendar and in every availability check (would be good, but not my first choice as there are countless WooCommerce Bookings functions you'd have to double-check and properly hook to / will probably take ages and countless back-and-forth)
3) The best: simply do not translate bookings at all when the bookable product/resource has no translation (thus not creating useless bloat in the db and reducing the likelihood for bugs such as this one)
I currently have to "clean up" duplicates directly in db on a daily basis.
Can you please share this with the Woocommerce Mutlilingual dev in charge of the Woocommerce Bookings Compatibility integration and come back with an update?
Our second tier support wasn't able to find a workaround. The issue is complex for a simple "hack". The problem is on our development team hands now. If there is a patch that you can try before the fix is released, I'll let you know.
On a single day (with a sale, a class opening, several booking at the same date, etc), daily cleanups aren't enough and we're losing sales as classes are (incorrectly) marked as fully booked until manually adjusted in db.
WCML 3.4.9 is unaffected. This (serious) bug comes from the refactoring of the Bookings compatibility in higher version.
More specifically:
WcBookings.5.4.5\class-wcml-bookings.php
line 926: $trnsl_booking_product_id = $booking_product_id;
line 941: $trnsl_booking_resource_id = $booking_resource_id;
I understand the idea behind these changes, but proper filtering of bookings to return those only in the current language is then required (and missing).
1) Has it been assigned to a dev?
2) Is it currently being addressed or is still in backlog?
3) what's the current estimate for a fix?
