Case study
WooCommerce → Lab Fulfillment Integration
A custom WordPress plugin that forwards paid WooCommerce orders straight to a genomics lab's fulfillment API — no more manual re-keying of orders.
Outcomes
- Paid orders forwarded to the fulfillment API automatically, with retry on failure
- Variant products mapped correctly — the silent order-dropping bug was found and fixed
- A checkout autofill vulnerability discovered and closed during the build
The problem
An online store selling DNA test kits took orders in WooCommerce, then staff manually re-entered each order into the lab’s fulfillment system. It was slow, and typos in kit codes or addresses meant lost kits and support tickets.
The approach
I built a lean WordPress plugin that hooks into WooCommerce’s order lifecycle: when an order is paid, the plugin maps the line items to the lab’s product codes and posts the order to the lab’s fulfillment API.
The unglamorous details are where the reliability lives:
- Variant products — WooCommerce reports variable products differently from simple ones, and the obvious implementation silently skips them. The plugin resolves variants to their parent mapping so every purchasable SKU ships.
- Failure handling — if the lab API is down, orders queue and retry instead of vanishing. Staff see the fulfillment status on the order screen.
- Security — while testing checkout, I found an autofill flaw that could leak a previous customer’s details into the form. It was fixed and verified before launch.
The outcome
Orders now flow from checkout to the lab with zero manual re-entry. The store owner stopped copying orders by hand, mis-shipped kits from typos ended, and the fulfillment status of any order is visible at a glance in the dashboard.