Problems associated with having a large number of custom options on simple products

Question

I have a simple product (SP) with 3 drop-down custom options with each having about 100 options. This simple product is associated to a configurable product (CP).

After importing these products using MAGMI, I noticed that I couldn't modify the custom options on the SPs from the admin. I found out that max_input_vars in PHP limits the number of variables being saved, so I increased that, and the custom options were once again editable in the Magento admin.

Now, I find another peculiar behavior. This SP won't show under the associated tab of the CP, apparently, because of the large number of custom options. The association is available in catalog_product_super_attribute, and when I remove all of the custom options from this SP, it shows up again in the associated tab of the CP.

Does anybody had to fix an issue like this? I am using Magento EE 1.13.

Answer 1

The problem here lies in the custom options being marked as required. Where a simple product has required custom options, it may not be associated with a configurable product as there would be no way for the customer to satisfy the requirement of providing a value for the custom option since the options from child products are not shown to the end-user on the configurable product view page.

For your products to work, you will need to mark the custom options on the simple products as not required, or perhaps consider placing these options on the configurable parent where they may be seen and values provided by the customer.

When the child products of a configurable product are loaded, the presence of required options on the child product is checked to prevent a situation where adding the configurable product to the cart would result in fulfillment errors.