Remove specific states of a country on Woocommerce Checkout

Question

I am trying to find a way to remove a few US states from the "State" dropdown in WooCommerce checkout page.

List of states:

1. Hawaii
2. Alaska
3. Armed Forces (AA)
4. Armed Forces (AE)
5. Armed Forces (AP)

What I have been doing so far:
I have been manually removing them as mentioned in this link. But this is not a good way, as the changes get overwritten every time WooCommerce is updated.

Alternative I found: On this link WooCommerce restrict shipping to states based on category, there's a way to set shipping states if specific condition is met. I am wondering if I can unset five states. This sounds more logical to me than setting 50 states. But unfortunately, I am not able to find anything useful.

Any ideas what could be a possible solution?

Answer 1

The simplest way is to remove them them using the dedicated filter hook woocommerce_states this way:

add_filter( 'woocommerce_states', 'custom_us_states', 10, 1 );
function custom_us_states( $states ) {
    $non_allowed_us_states = array( 'AK', 'HI', 'AA', 'AE', 'AP'); 

    // Loop through your non allowed us states and remove them
    foreach( $non_allowed_us_states as $state_code ) {
        if( isset($states['US'][$state_code]) )
            unset( $states['US'][$state_code] );
    }
    return $states;
}

Code goes in functions.php file of your active child theme (or active theme). Tested and work.

Then you can add some condition or make a custom settings page like in the threads below:

• Disable some states if specific products are in cart in Woocommerce
• US allowed States through Woocommerce custom setting page

Answer 2

Best way of doing this would be using a filter, add this snippet in your themes functions.php

/**
 * Modify Woocommerce states array
 *
 * @param array $states, collection of all $states
 * @return array $states, modified array.
*/
add_filter( 'woocommerce_states', function( $states ){
    // Unset Hawaii
    unset( $states['US']['HI'] );

    return $states;
}, 999);

You can unset any states like this.