3.16.0 - See what eBay requires, before eBay refuses the listing

See what eBay requires, before eBay refuses the listing

eBay requires particular item specifics for each category and refuses a listing that is missing one. Until now there was no way to find out which, short of pushing and reading the rejection.

The product's eBay Listing tab has a new section, Item Specifics. It asks eBay which specifics your category requires and shows every one of them with:

• the value that would be sent,
• where that value came from — a product attribute, your listing settings, or typed here,
• and which are still empty.

Anything missing can be filled in on the spot. Where eBay publishes a list of accepted values, and for many categories it does, the field offers them rather than leaving you to guess the wording.

This is the answer to a question we had no good reply to. A merchant selling network switches was told by eBay that the item specific Type was missing, and wrote back: not sure where I would find what type is missing, don't see that in the settings or product when editing the product. They were right. The plugin had been asking eBay that exact question for months, and using the answer for one thing only — refusing the push.

How it behaves

• Nothing is asked of eBay while your product page loads. The section checks when you open it, and the answer is cached for a week.
• Values typed here are stored with the listing settings, not added to your WooCommerce attributes, so nothing new appears on your shop front. Attributes are still read and still used; a value typed here simply takes precedence over an attribute of the same name.
• Where a value already comes from an attribute or from the grading fields, the section says so, rather than leaving you wondering why a box you never filled in is satisfied.
• Change category later and what you typed is kept. The new category lists different specifics; the ones it does not list appear underneath in their own boxes, still being sent, and still yours to change or clear.
• If eBay cannot be reached, the section says so. It does not report all clear. Pushing still works in that case, exactly as before, so an eBay outage cannot stop anyone listing.

The readiness list above the Push button gained a line for item specifics. It reads "not checked" until you look, because before asking eBay the honest answer is that we do not know — and reading "Ready to push" above a listing eBay is about to refuse is the complaint this release answers.

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Upgrade notes: nothing to change. No setting, no live listing and no stored data is touched by updating. The new section is empty until you open it.

Covered by tests/test-item-specifics.php. Three of the fixes in this release came from an adversarial review of the change itself rather than from testing it by hand: a readiness banner that turned red and never turned back, a category chosen through Browse or Suggest that left the previous category's answer on screen, and a save that replaced stored values instead of merging them.