API - Term Exists Check

[danielbarenkamp]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
It is very frustrating, that product categories get created even when they exists. This is due to the wp_insert_term function does not check children categories. For example in the live environment there are theses categories:
Media

• CDs
• Vinyl

When we do an API import via create product the categories "CDs" will be created as a new category.

Describe the solution you'd like
The category should be checked if it exists, before creating it. It is very simple, we added the following to the "includes/abstracts/abstract-wc-rest-terms-controller.php" starting before the wp_insert_term in line 397:

		$termExists = get_term_by( 'name', $request['name'], 'product_cat' );
		if ( $termExists ) {
			$error_data = array( 'status' => 400 );

			// If we're going to inform the client that the term exists,
			// give them the identifier they can actually use.
			$term_id = $termExists->term_id;
			if ( $term_id ) {
				$error_data['resource_id'] = $term_id;
			}

			return new WP_Error( 'term_exists', 'term_exists', $error_data );
		}

Describe alternatives you've considered
None

Additional context
Add any other context or screenshots about the feature request here.

[vedanshujain]

From your example, Media > CD category and a top-level CD are actually different. In the current versions of API, this is enforced in the way of only accepting category ID as a param. It's a bit cumbersome than just sending Category text via a param, but because of this its also harder to make mistakes and creating unwanted categories while importing.

Because of the above, I am closing this issue, but feel free respond back in case of any questions. (Also we are deprecating this repo, so feel to open an issue in woocommerce/woocommerce if you'd like.)