What are the 6 possible template fallbacks in the Magento Study guide excerise?

Question

I'm trying to work through the exercises in the Magento study guide. I've come the following:

Add an additional hardcoded theme called “primary” that is always first in the fallback order in the configured package. Then add an additional fallback theme base/[configured-default-theme] that is always evaluated just before the base/default fallback. Create a test action that allows you to test all 6 possible template fallbacks at once.

But I am not clear what the '6 possible template fallbacks' are in question.

I came up with

• default/primary
• default/anothertheme
• default/default
• base/primary
• base/anothertheme
• base/default

Assuming I have set my default theme to 'anothertheme', but not sure if that is correct, as looking through the code only base/default is used, after the first 3

Any ideas?

Answer 1

The exercice question is somehow unclear and the answer will depends on the Magento version.

Magento < 1.9

In versions of Magento before 1.9 here is how the fallback system used to work:

• exception defined when clicking Add Exception is picked first in case the user agent matches
• the theme defined in the backend in then picked: <yourpackage>/<your_theme>
• the default package theme is picked: <your_package>/default
• the base/default theme is picked

Magento >= 1.9

In Magento 1.9, an infinite fallback system has been introduced. You can find a great article explaining by Alan Storm here: http://alanstorm.com/magento_parent_child_themes

The idea is that you can create an etc/theme.xml in any theme folder that will declare the inheritance between the theme and a parent theme. For example if you create app/design/frontend/<your_package_1>/default/etc/theme.xml with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<theme>
    <parent>your_package_2/default</parent>
</theme>

And then you create app/design/frontend/<your_package_2>/default/etc/theme.xml with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<theme>
    <parent>rwd/default</parent>
</theme>

That will make the fallback system like this:

• exception defined when clicking Add Exception is picked first in case the user agent matches
• <your_package_1>/default
• <your_package_2>/default
• rwd/default
• base/default