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You probably just ran an update from 0 - and get copies of all templates from main install form since break of dawn.

And then - they should not be in your Swift design folder - they would normally be in your /Templates folder directly - so something funny you must have done.... :-)

I can explain the decontextualized.

When you are on a page in the backend and edit i.e. a page or a pragraph, it knows what website you are on. A website uses a design - i.e. Swift. So based on that information when you need to select a template, Dynamicweb can figure out that you might want to use a template from the Swift design.

When you are setting up things under settings - i.e. a shipping method or payment method - you do not edit those in the context of a website. So we have no clue if you will use a template from Swift or from another design from another website. So there is no "design context" when choosing the template there.

So you have to choose a template that is "out of context" - which means from /Files/Templates/eCom7/Checkout/* or similar.

Then when that payment method is used - on a checkout setup on a paragraph which is on a page which is on a website that uses the Swift design, it will first check if a template with the same name exists in the context of the design - /Files/Templates/designs/swift/eCom7/Checkout/* - and use that if it exist or fallback to the one you chose.

Not super simple - I agree - but how it works.

So all kinds of templates you can choose from places that are not in a website context, and hence not in a design context, needs templates in these locations.

All of this complexity stems from the fact that designs and layout is a relatively new implementation model - about 13 years old - and we still have support for the implementation models before that. Because as we discussed earlier - we always want and need to update all customers 4eva...

Hi Justin,

• How do other developers setup the local environment (...)
  I can't speak for all of the files you are seeing, but using the example of the Payment providers again, In my opinion, you should commit the files to git anyway, because the files, even if empty, are meant to be empty and used.
   
• Does this mean that (...) the templates (...) out of date in the docoumentation
  No. That documentation is HOW Dynamicweb works with Payment Providers. Then in another part of the documentation you can learn about templating works https://doc.dynamicweb.com/template-tags/introduction/concept/templates.
  Then you have Swift, which is a Design https://doc.dynamicweb.com/template-tags/introduction/concept/designs. Basically it's an implementation on the Dynamicweb platform. And Swift is using Payment Providers, but levering the templating capabilities to keep the templates files and design consistent.
   
• Is it then correct that the template lowest in the hierarchie wins
  Yes, and there's actually 4 hiererarchies to it. Going botom up, the hierarchy is
  • Templates/Designs/[YourDesignFolder]/[YourPageTemplateNameAsAFolder]/*
  • Templates/Designs/[YourDesignFolder]/*
  • Templates/Designs/*
  • Templates/*
    You can read all about it in https://doc.dynamicweb.com/template-tags/introduction/concept/templates
     
• Altough I think I get the "de-contextualized" concept I think, I'm confused about what it really means.
  If a context dependent request (C# method or template tag or logic) and it's used on a de-contextualized setting, you'll run into issues (tags might return empty - c# methods will likely throw an "object not set to an instance of an object" exception)
  Consider the order confirmation template:
  • If you apply it to the app settings on the checkout paragraph, then when the order is complete, there's context - we know which paragraph it is, hence the page, hence the area.
  • If you apply the same file to order state notifications and you go to Ecommerce and change the order to that particular state, then there's no pageview (no page, no area, no nothing). You could have 20 websites in the backend, which one to choose? You could argue the order had been placed on a particular page, but what if the page no longer exists? The template what works correclty in the previous bullet, no longer works here.

Hope this makes sense.

Nuno Aguiar