Display templates are files with .html extension which are used for customizing appearance of the content in Sharepoint search results. When you upload such files to Site settings > Master page and page layouts > Display templates folder, Sharepoint automatically creates js version of display template, which is actually used by search engine. When you publish or delete basic html file, associated js file is published or deleted automatically.
The structure of most display templates looks like this:
1: <html xmlns:mso="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
2: xmlns:msdt="uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C14882">
3: <head>
4: <title>Foo</title>
5:
6: <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
7: <mso:CustomDocumentProperties>
8: <mso:TemplateHidden msdt:dt="string">0</mso:TemplateHidden>
9: <mso:MasterPageDescription msdt:dt="string">Foo</mso:MasterPageDescription>
10: <mso:ContentTypeId msdt:dt="string">...</mso:ContentTypeId>
11: <mso:TargetControlType msdt:dt="string">;#SearchResults;#</mso:TargetControlType>
12: <mso:HtmlDesignAssociated msdt:dt="string">1</mso:HtmlDesignAssociated>
13: <mso:ManagedPropertyMapping msdt:dt="string">'Title':'Title','Path':'Path',
14: 'Description':'Description','EditorOWSUSER':'EditorOWSUSER',
15: 'LastModifiedTime':'LastModifiedTime','CollapsingStatus':'CollapsingStatus',
16: 'DocId':'DocId','HitHighlightedSummary':'HitHighlightedSummary',
17: 'HitHighlightedProperties':'HitHighlightedProperties',
18: 'FileExtension':'FileExtension','ViewsLifeTime':'ViewsLifeTime',
19: 'ParentLink':'ParentLink','FileType':'FileType','IsContainer':'IsContainer',
20: 'SecondaryFileExtension':'SecondaryFileExtension','DisplayAuthor':'DisplayAuthor',
21: 'SPSiteURL':'SPSiteURL',...</mso:ManagedPropertyMapping>
22: </mso:CustomDocumentProperties>
23: </xml><![endif]-->
24: </head>
25: <body>
26: <div id="Item_Foo">
27: ...
28: </div>
29: </body>
30: </html>
In the top area of the file metadata section is defined. Very important section is <mso:ManagedPropertyMapping>…</<mso:ManagedPropertyMapping>. It contains list of managed properties which can be used in the current display template. The actual look and feel template is defined inside topmost div tag (in example above it’s the div with id = “Item_Foo”).
During the lifetime of your application it may be needed to update existing display templates which are used in living site. If you only need to update look and feel part of template it won’t cause a lot of problems: just re-upload html file to the the location inside Site settings > Master page and page layouts > Display templates folder and publish it (depending on your settings you may also need to approve the file). But if you added new managed properties to <mso:ManagedPropertyMapping>…</<mso:ManagedPropertyMapping> section you may face with the problem that values of these properties will be always empty when you will try to use them inside display template.
This problem is caused by Sharepoint cache: it somehow caches mapped managed properties so deeply, that simple re-uploading and re-publishing doesn’t help (I tried also restart Sharepoint search and search host services and restart the server, but it didn’t help). In order to clear them from cache I found the following solution: delete original html file from Site settings > Master page and page layouts > Display templates, upload it from scratch and publish. If this display template was used in some search result types, you may also need to re-create this result type. After that try to search the content, for which updated display template should be used (Ctrl-F5 may be needed in browser as well): new managed properties should appear now.
