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bug(plugin-ecommerce): variant title ignores drafts and goes stale

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
58/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
node.js, typescript
Domain
backend, database

Research direction

Read packages/plugin-ecommerce/src/collections/variants/createVariantsCollection/hooks/beforeChange.ts and the variant title field in packages/plugin-ecommerce/src/collections/variants/createVariantsCollection/index.ts; then trace the products collection hooks for a place to update existing variants when a product title changes. Run the reproduction's pnpm test:int tests first. Done when all three cases pass: draft product titles are used, existing variant titles update after a rename, and the generated title field is read-only.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Bug
Describe the Bug

The ecommerce plugin generates variant titles as <product title> — <option labels> in the variants collection's beforeChange hook. The title is used as the variant's useAsTitle, so it is what editors see in the admin panel, and it goes stale or wrong in three ways:

  1. It uses the published product, not the latest draft. The hook loads the product with findByID without draft: true. Products have autosave drafts, so after a product is renamed (or duplicated as "… (copy)" and renamed) without publishing, new variants still get the old product name.
  2. It is not updated when the product is renamed. The title is only generated when the variant itself is saved, and the products collection has no hook that updates its variants. Renaming a product leaves all its existing variants with the old name until each one is re-saved.
  3. Edits to the title are silently discarded. The hook overwrites title on every save (options is required, so it is always set), but the field is editable in the admin panel and its description ("This is populated by default") suggests the generated value is only a default that can be overridden.

Since the title is always derived, it could read the product with draft: true, be regenerated from a products afterChange hook when the product title changes, and be readOnly with a description that says it is generated.

This affects both v3 and v4: the same hook ships in 4.0.0-beta.4 and is on main, and neither has a products hook that updates variant titles.

Link to the code that reproduces this issue

https://github.com/jhb-software/payload-issue-reproductions/tree/main/variant-title-ignores-draft-and-manual-title/

Reproduction Steps
  1. Clone this repo and open the variant-title-ignores-draft-and-manual-title/ directory
  2. pnpm install
  3. pnpm test:int: all three tests fail. Each creates a published product "Shirt" with a "Size" variant type and a variant with the option "Small".
× uses the latest draft of the product
    Expected: "T-Shirt — Small"
    Received: "Shirt — Small"
× updates the variant title when the product is renamed
    Expected: "T-Shirt — Small"
    Received: "Shirt — Small"
× marks the always-generated title field as read-only
    (updating the title to "Edited title" returns "Shirt — Small")
    Expected: true
    Received: undefined
Which area(s) are affected?

plugin: ecommerce

Environment Info
Relevant Packages:
  payload: 3.92.0
  @payloadcms/plugin-ecommerce: 3.92.0
  @payloadcms/db-sqlite: 3.92.0
Node: 22.23.3, pnpm: 11.5.1, darwin arm64
Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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