What’s New in WooCommerce 3.5: REST API v3 and improved email copy

Written by Claudiu Lodromanean on October 23, 2018 News, Product News.

Since our last minor release in May, we’ve been working on a variety of improvements to WooCommerce:

  • REST API v3
  • Improved copy for transactional emails

To ensure this update is stable, we’ve been doing plenty of testing and QA on our side including a public beta period, unit and integration testing, compatibility testing with our extensions and popular premium themes, running the latest version on Woo.com, and working with customers to do managed updates.

WooCommerce 3.5 is a minor release, meaning it should be fully backwards compatible with all WooCommerce releases since 3.0. However, it’s still considered best practice, and recommended, to backup before updating.

We recommend viewing our documentation on how to updatemaking a backup, updating extensions, and finally updating WooCommerce via WP Admin.

Here are some more details about what’s new in 3.5:

REST API v3

The latest version of the WooCommerce REST API is ready, and it features new endpoints as well as improvements to existing endpoints. Some of the features include:

  • A reviews endpoint to list, get, create, and update product reviews.
  • Date fields are now editable on the products endpoint, and the endpoint has been updated to work with the “on backorder” stock status introduced in WC 3.3.
  • A series of new reports endpoints to get total counts of orders, products, customers, coupons and reviews.
  • New orderby options for the products endpoint to allow listing products by price, popularity, or rating.
  • Automatic total calculations when applying/removing coupons in the orders endpoint.
  • New data endpoints to fetch Continents, Countries and Currencies.
  • Refund line items through the API.
  • Ability to batch update settings.

You can look through the full documentation for the API v3 here, and see details for all of the endpoints and their query parameters.

Note: API v2 and other legacy APIs are still included in WooCommerce 3.5 for backwards compatibility.

Improved copy for transactional emails

The wording of the WooCommerce transactional emails has remained largely unchanged for years. We have improved the default wording of the emails to be friendlier and more human. Improving the default content will improve the customer experience and reduce the need for store owners to do template overrides of the transactional emails.

This is the first phase of a larger initiative to improve WooCommerce’s emails and email content editing experience. Stay tuned in 2019 for more improvements.

But wait, there’s more!

  • You can now export products by category in the CSV exporter.

  • You can now set a low-stock threshold for individual products.

  • The payment method settings page has been slightly redesigned for improved accessibility.

Features for developers

  • The Action Scheduler library used by the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin and other WooCommerce plugins is now included in WooCommerce core. It provides a robust, scalable background processing solution for developers. In 3.5 webhooks are delivered using this library.
  • Support for the Custom Product Tables feature plugin. We’re working on custom database tables to store product data and improve the performance and scalability of WooCommerce. This release adds the hooks and filters required by the feature plugin. Read more about this here.
  • Support for the wc-admin feature plugin. We’re working on a modernization of the WooCommerce admin experience. This release adds the API required by the feature plugin. Read more about this here.
  • Many new filters and actions to increase the customizability of WooCommerce.

For a more complete list of new features, enhancements, tweaks, and fixes, see the changelog.

You should also read the development blog to see what templates and functions have changed in WooCommerce 3.5.

Ready to update?

Ready to give WooCommerce 3.5 a shot? Review our documentation about how to update, make sure backups are in place, and then grab the update in WP Admin.

We’re here if you need us:

Please note that we are not able to diagnose or solve potential issues via blog comments. The fastest way to get in touch with us is one of the methods listed above.

If you’re craving more technical details about this update, you can read our post on the developer blog.

What do you think of our latest release? Let us know in the comments!

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23 Responses

  1. Surya Prakash
    October 24, 2018 at 6:56 am #

    Thanks for the info.

  2. pumamood
    October 24, 2018 at 5:16 pm #

    Hi, I’ve just updated WooCommerce to v3.5… After update, endpoint “v2/products/brands” (installed by wc-brands plugin https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/wc-brands/) doesn’t work anymore.
    Do you have same issue?
    thanks

  3. Alex Rees
    October 25, 2018 at 6:45 pm #

    Why not allow the transactional email text to be customised via admin?

    • Claudiu Lodromanean
      October 25, 2018 at 9:39 pm #

      That’s just not a feature in WooCommerce yet. We’re exploring the best way to let people customize the emails for a 2019 release.

      • graffiti art store
        October 26, 2018 at 2:34 pm #

        Hey Claudiu, customization is great, but first of all you need to allow people to add service tracking with parcel ID (a link field) in a very simple way. Repetitive tasks are boring, i want to only copy the parcel ID i get from my post office in a field next to button “order complete” in the admin.. simple and very usefull.. a need for every online sellers 🙂

        • Toby
          November 6, 2018 at 11:38 am #

          second this.

          adding tracking codes needs to be really quick & easy.

      • John
        November 5, 2018 at 11:58 pm #

        Good to know this.

      • Luke
        November 7, 2018 at 2:39 pm #

        The email update should have been done years ago. Stop “exploring” and start implementing.

  4. Bobby
    October 26, 2018 at 6:52 pm #

    Thanks for sharing this information about what’s new in WooCommerce 3.5; and explaining about REST API v3 and improved email copy.

  5. Revit
    October 30, 2018 at 7:55 am #

    Thanks for updating the woocomerce and I really love it.

  6. Brenda Grobler
    October 31, 2018 at 4:26 pm #

    Since your last update, all my product images are screwed. It only shows up as a thumbnail. My dropdown menus on variable products doesn’t pull through and we’ve been struggling to fix this issue for a week.

    We’ve even created a ticket to ask for help, with NO response from WooCommerce.

    You guys are DAMAGING MY BUSINESS.

    I’m so angry I could cry.

  7. skr110793
    November 3, 2018 at 7:14 am #

    Thank you. good to hear that

  8. Lana
    November 5, 2018 at 8:31 pm #

    WOW. Great job u guys. really excited to try the new woocommerce version.
    Thank you for all of this/

  9. John
    November 6, 2018 at 12:02 am #

    I have seen a lot of changes, even before updating. For example, my StoreFront theme changed a lot, I love it. It used to make my logo very BIG, but now the logo is located where I want it to be, and in a correct size. Thanks for the updates…

  10. Raymond Pierce
    November 6, 2018 at 2:06 am #

    Still looking for one feature I have been asking for, for years.
    Adding custom fields to a new order entry in admin panel and making custom fields more user friendly. This site grabs up to 10 extra custom fields and adding them on a new order is quite a pain for my customers.
    These should all appear in their respective areas. i.e. with the billing and delivery/shipping area at the top of the admin order page.
    Custom fields should be treated like members of the family non alien fields that no real place in the admin panel.

    • Raymond Pierce
      November 6, 2018 at 2:08 am #

      to clarify, I mean custom checkout fields created by checkout field editor or similar plugin.

      • Luke
        November 7, 2018 at 2:42 pm #

        You might be better seeking input from the author of “checkout field editor” plugin, Woocommerce won’t help you in the same way Microsoft won’t help you with issues related to Adobe Photoshop.

  11. BK
    November 7, 2018 at 4:18 pm #

    You shrunk my logo, and between wp, the hosting company and woo, i now have a message that suggests i do not have ssl ??

  12. ghulamabbascs
    November 8, 2018 at 10:08 am #

    Thanks for improving the woocomerce

  13. tutuappvipfree
    November 11, 2018 at 7:02 am #

    nice post

  14. nguyenhuy122
    November 13, 2018 at 9:36 am #

    WOW. Great job u guys. really excited to try the new woocommerce version.

  15. ram
    November 17, 2018 at 6:18 am #

    WOW. Great job u guys. really excited to try the new woocommerce version.
    Thank you for all of this/

  16. Gobi Krishna D
    November 17, 2018 at 12:53 pm #

    Hi!

    My website is set only cash on delivery. Before customer receive mail as Thank you for your order and your order has been processing. But after update. Processing mail says. Your payment confirmed and order on process. But, for COD it’s should say payment is confirmed. or i should do any changes on setting? This happening after update latest version of woocommerce.