WooCommerce Categories starting with a number fail to pass information to Facebook product category

[johndcoy]

🔎 Isolate the bug

• [X] I have confirmed this occurs in the most recent version of WordPress, WooCommerce, and Facebook for WooCommerce.
• [X] I have confirmed this occurs when only WooCommerce and Facebook for WooCommerce are active and when using a default WordPress or WooCommerce theme.

✍️ Describe the bug

When a category name starts with a number ( digit like 1,2, etc. ) the Facebook product category automatically assigns a default predefined category, not from WooCommerce. Depending on the starting number value, determines which predefined category Facebook assigns.

Information within logs does not appear out of the ordinary :

[category] => 5ategory with a dash and dot

🚶‍♀️ Steps to reproduce

1. Create a product and sync it to Facebook.
2. Assign a category that starts with a number i.e 5 Turtle Doves
3. View the Edit Item page on Facebook from Catalog > Items > Edit Item
4. See predefined category is assigned and category from WooCommerce ignored.

Screenshot link: https://d.pr/i/vFOKPM

✔️ Expected behavior

The expectation is for a category name allowed in WooCommerce to be created as-is within Facebook. This should apply to parent and child/nested categories.

🗃 Logs

	09-15-2022 @ 20:37:20 - Request
uri: https://graph.facebook.com/v13.0/5310171189066632
body: Array
(
    [name] => Test 17
    [description] => Test 17
    [image_url] => https://square-testing.mystagingwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/woocommerce-placeholder.png
    [additional_image_urls] => 
    [url] => https://square-testing.mystagingwebsite.com/product/test-17/
    [category] => 5ategory with a dash and dot
    [brand] => My WordPress Site
    [retailer_id] => sku17_29787
    [price] => 999
    [currency] => USD
    [availability] => in stock
    [visibility] => published
    [sale_price_start_date] => 1970-01-29T00:00+00:00
    [sale_price_end_date] => 2038-01-17T23:59+00:00
    [sale_price] => 0
)
timeout: 500
method: POST

09-15-2022 @ 20:37:20 - Response
code: 200
message: OK
body: {"success":true}

[rawdreeg]

Thanks for reporting this, @johndcoy.

I was able to reproduce this. Not sure if this is a new behaviour but It seems like Meta/Facebook is setting the Google Product Category to the category value and when this start with a number matching one of the Google Category, this is set instead.

I will need to discuss this issue with the team. It is possible that the category name needs to match Product Category Guidelines

[rawdreeg]

This issue was due to a bug in Meta's UI. We have verified this is now fixed. However, there's a chance that automatic categories will step in to correct invalid categories to adhere to tax regulations for Facebook checkout sellers.