Managed property mapping retrieval in a Display Template explained

If you read this you have most likely created a custom display template one time or another, and also used a custom managed property in that template.


Understanding the relationship with managed properties and display templates is quite useful when you construct your own template logic. At the end I will also cover the relationship between a display template and the search engine.

Lesson learned: After reading this post you should have learned that when in doubt, use $getItemValue(ctx, "Variable Name") and not ctx.CurrentItem.ManagedPropertyName.

Entity extraction in SharePoint based on the path managed property..

……is not possible, so a work-around is needed in order to accomplish this.
As background information I’m indexing a file server with a structure like below:

• \\server\share\HR\
• \\server\share\F\
• \\server\share\MKT\

Below each of these end points there can be any number of sub folders like \\server\share\HR\john\sickleaves\test.docx. The clue is that I want a refiner for HR/F/MKT which should read:

• Human Resource
• Finance
• Marketing