Technical Articles & Tutorials

Amazon Cognito User Pool delivers authentication, authorization, and user management capabilities for web and mobile applications. This guide demonstrates how to configure a comprehensive Cognito User Pool for a Single Page Application (SPA), covering user registration, sign-in functionality, custom attributes, and email verification processes.

Context-aware configurations are related to a content resource, allows different configs for different content resources. Parameters within nested contexts allow hierarchical based inheritance and global fallback values when required. Leveraging the Context-Aware Configuration Java API, one can retrieve the appropriate configuration for each content resource without concerning where it is stored or how the inheritance works.

The Sling Model Delegation pattern allows extending Core Components functionality while maintaining the original API contract. In a previous article, we discussed how to implement Sling Model delegation pattern. Now, we will cover how to write comprehensive unit tests and ensure code coverage for these delegated Sling Models using JUnit 5, AEM Mocks.

Spring Security is a powerful authentication and authorization framework for Java applications. It provides comprehensive security services for Spring based applications, including features like user authentication, password encoding, session management, and protection against common security vulnerabilities.

AEM Core Components are a standard set components to be used with AEM. Built with Adobe's best practices and standards, Core Components provide a baseline set of functionality for any Sites implementation. However, it's often necessary to customize the functionality of core components to address project-specific requirements. The business logic for the core components is implemented in Sling Models, which can be customized using the delegation pattern.

AEM offers three deployment models: On-Premise, Managed Service & AEM as a Cloud Service. Each designed to meet different organizational needs, technical requirements, and strategic objectives. Understanding these options is crucial for making an informed decision that aligns with your business goals, technical capabilities, and budget constraints.

Due to the organization's networking policy, certain applications may need to be hosted behind a firewall, accessible only through specific whitelisted IP addresses. In terms of AEMaaCS, Cloud Environment IP range is large and dynamic, is not shared with customers for whitelisting. To address this issue, Adobe provides a solution to assign a dedicated egress IP address to your AEMaaCS environment using Advanced Networking so that you can whitelist this IP address in organization's firewall.

In AEM development, it's common to encounter scenarios where the same set of dialog fields such as alternative text for an image, or text and background color options are needed across multiple components. Traditionally, developers might copy-paste these dialog configurations into each component, but this leads to code duplication and maintenance headaches.

Search Facet allow authors to filter assets based on metadata. While AEM provides default search facets out-of-the-box (like file type, file size, status), many organizations have unique metadata requirements. That's where custom search facets come in — they let you tailor the search experience to better suit your organization's specific asset metadata and workflows.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is changing how teams build and manage cloud infrastructure by turning manual processes into code. Terraform, developed by HashiCorp, is one of the most popular tools in the IaC space. It allows you to define and provision infrastructure using a declarative configuration language and supports a wide range of cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

In asset management, it becomes apparent that certain assets are no longer referenced with any pages. It's recommended to delete these unused images from asset repository. This not only decreases size of AEM instance but also improves search/query performance.

AWS Simple Email Service (SES) is a cloud-based SASS platform that allows you to send emails to your customers. Amazon SES sends email using SMTP, which is the most common email protocol on the internet. It allows sending large volumes of email in minutes.

Edge Delivery Services provides different options for authoring content via WYSIWYG authoring, headless authoring, or document based authoring. This article solely focuses on document based authoring that enables content creators to use familiar tools like Microsoft Word or Google Docs to write and structure content.

While Salesforce provides an online development environment, setting up a local development environment can enhance productivity, enable faster testing, and allow integration with version control systems. This allows developers to build, debug, and validate LWC applications before pushing them to Salesforce org.

In the previous article, Set Up Spring Boot Application using Spring Initializr, we covered the setup of a Spring Boot application. Now, we will configure the Spring Boot application to integrate with a PostgreSQL database and implement event creation functionality using Spring MVC architecture.

In AWS SES, verified identity is a domain or email address that you use to send email. Before sending emails with Amazon SES, you must create and verify each identity used as the "From" address. Identity verification ensures ownership and prevents unauthorized use.

Spring Initializr is a web-based tool that simplifies the setup of Spring Boot projects by generating pre-configured templates with necessary dependencies. It provides a quick and efficient way to start a new Spring Boot application. Spring Boot itself is a powerful framework built on the Spring Framework, designed for creating stand-alone, production-ready applications with minimal configuration.

In AEM 6.5, you can define arbitrary run modes to apply OSGi configurations to specific instances. However, in AEMaaCS, the platform supports a fixed set of predefined run modes. While custom run modes cannot be created in AEMaaCS, you can still achieve similar functionality using alternative approaches. In this article, we will explore the changes in run modes in AEMaaCS and discuss how to adapt your custom run modes for use in AEMaaCS.

Enabling Show/Hide functionality for AEM dialog fields improves user experience by allowing content authors to focus on relevant fields, thereby making the authoring process more efficient and less error-prone.

Integrating Private GitHub repositories into AEM Cloud Manager streamlines development workflow by allowing direct code validation within GitHub, eliminating the need for frequent synchronization with Adobe's repository. This article provides a step-by-step guide to integrating private GitHub repositories into AEM Cloud Manager.

In today's data-driven world, tracking user interactions is essential for optimizing digital experiences. By implementing data layer and integrating Google Tag Manager (GTM) with BigQuery, businesses can efficiently collect, structure, and analyze granular event data at scale, unlocking actionable insights for advanced analytics.

Custom OSGi configurations are often required based on project needs. In a previous article, we discussed how to implement custom OSGi configurations. Now, we will cover how to write unit tests and ensure code coverage for these configurations using JUnit 5, OSGi Mocks, and Mockito.

Design Dialog allows developers and template authors to configure component behavior at the template level. It includes setting default values and controlling the visibility of fields in the component dialog. Acting as a bridge between Template Editor and Component Dialog, it provides a way to customize component behavior dynamically.

DeepSeek R1 is a powerful conversational AI model, and integrating it with Chainlit UI allows to create an interactive and user friendly interface. Using Ollama, allows to run LLMs locally, making it simple to deploy and interact with models like DeepSeek R1.

To troubleshoot issues, we may need to impersonate users in the author environment. With the Impersonate functionality, a user can work on behalf of another user.

Sling Model Injectors allow developers to retrieve and inject data directly into Sling models. However, sometimes, standard injectors aren't enough when you need to pull custom or complex data, such as tag properties or content fragments. In such cases, custom Sling Model injectors can be developed to meet specific data requirements.

Creating dynamic and interactive components can significantly enhance the authoring experience. One effective enhancement is dynamically populating the options of a select field within a component dialog. This is especially useful when the options need to be fetched from an external source or depend on other selections made by the author.

ACS AEM Commons is a collection of reusable components and utilities designed to enhance the functionality of AEM. It offers a variety of features that help developers tackle common challenges and simplify development tasks through effective solutions.

Content transfer is a crucial step when migrating AEM projects to AEMaaCS, especially with large volumes of content. To streamline this process, Adobe provides Content Transfer Tool (CTT), which can be used to initiate the migration of existing content from a source AEM instance (on-premise or AMS) to the target AEM Cloud Service instance.

It is good practice to have a Domain for your site that is memorable for customer and reflects your brand's identity. Adding a custom domain name in AEMaaCS requires interaction between DNS service and Cloud Manager. A user must be a member of Business Owner or Deployment Manager role to complete this task.

Tailing logs is a very basic need that every developer performs daily, as logs serve as the frontline for debugging AEM applications. While AEM 6.5 allows tailing logs via the System Console or SSH into AEM servers, AEM Cloud Service no longer provides this access. Instead, Adobe Cloud Manager supports accessing AEMaaCS logs via Adobe I/O CLI with Cloud Manager plugin, which allows for downloading and tailing logs. Additionally, Adobe Cloud Manager allows for the download of logs, by day, via environment's Download Logs action.

Environment variables allow AEM code and applications to adapt based on context, enabling different configurations for development, production, or staging environments. They can be updated or deleted as needed, no code changes or deployments required. By separating code from configuration, they enhance security and keep sensitive information out of version control.

OSGi Configuration allow us to configure run-mode specific properties. All the out-of-the-box OSGi configurations are available at /system/console/configMgr while custom configurations can be created as per business requirements. These configurations are typically managed within the AEM project's ui.config module in the code repository.

When caching is implemented for your website, it's essential to clear the dispatcher cache after publishing pages to ensure the most recent content is displayed to end users. To reflect changes made by authors, we need to configure Replication Agent on Author instance to push changes to the Publish instance and Dispatcher Flush Agent on Publisher instance to invalidate the Dispatcher cache. Once the cache is invalidated, next request will be served from the publisher, and the response will be added to the cache; subsequent requests will be served from the cache without interacting with the publisher.

By default, AEM projects are built by Cloud Manager build process using Oracle 8 JDK, but AEM Cloud Service customers are strongly advised to set the JDK version used to execute Maven to 11 for improved performance, security, and support over earlier versions.

Troubleshooting and debugging are crucial aspects of working with AEM, allowing developers to identify, analyze, and fix issues in their code. Since AEM projects often involve extensive custom code for Models, Services, Servlets, and Schedulers, debugging allows real-time inspection and provides valuable insights into the root cause, enabling effective fixes. To debug an AEM application, you can use Java Remote Debugging.

AEM Project Archetype is a Maven template creates a minimal, best-practices-based AEM project. Over the years, AEM Project Archetype has been revolutionized with significant advancements, introducing many new features and possibilities into AEM projects. The latest Archetype emphasizing the separation of content and code into discrete subpackages to maintain the distinction between mutable and immutable content. To align existing projects with AEM’s Cloud Service structure, the Repository Modernizer tool can be used to refactor and reorganize project packages, separating content and code into the appropriate packages.

In General, when an end user submits a form, the request is routed to the publish environment. Any modifications made at the CRX/DE during the execution of the post request are stored in the publish environment. However, a request may arise where upon form submission, certain data such as a content fragment needs to be created on the author instance. Following approval from business-level users, the content will be published to the publish environment, making it publicly accessible on the internet.

In AEM development, prioritizing code quality is essential. Even during deployment via Cloud Manager, it's crucial to meet specific metrics for security, reliability, maintainability, and code coverage. SonarQube enables continuous code inspections, identifying issues early in the development lifecycle that could affect these metrics. Though integration, developers can ensure the maintenance of clean, efficient, and secure code throughout the AEM development process.

Experience Fragments (XF) often face cache invalidation issues, where modifying and publishing an XF does not update the pages referencing it because the XF content is cached within each individual page rather than a shared repository. As a result, authors have to manually activate or invalidate each page to see the updated XF content, making the process tedious and impractical.

Custom metadata that allows authors to define additional properties for digital assets beyond the standard metadata fields. These custom metadata fields in AEM Assets enhance asset management by allowing organizations to tailor information to their specific needs. They facilitate the inclusion of project specific details, campaign tags, and other relevant data, streamlining more effective asset categorization and management.

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) provides powerful tools for managing and delivering content efficiently. Two essential components in AEM are Content Fragments (CF) and Experience Fragments (XF). While both are used to create reusable content, each serves a distinct purpose and offers unique capabilities.

Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) evaluates the current AEM implementation, identifying areas not in alignment with AEM best practices and offering guidance on how to improve. It also expedites the assessment of readiness for transitioning from an existing Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) deployment to AEM as a Cloud Service. This tool generates a report pinpointing potential areas for refactoring, marking the initial phase of migrating to AEM as a Cloud Service.

Page properties in AEM serve as metadata that provide essential information about a webpage. While AEM provides a standard set of properties to meet basic web project needs, organizations often enhance them with extra functionalities or custom data fields to effectively address more complex or unique requirements in content management.

AEM provides a set of pre-defined workflow process that cover common scenarios, but sometimes these built-in features may not fully handle the complexities of specific workflows. In such cases, AEM allows developers to create custom processes, enhancing the functionality of standard workflows to meet unique requirements.

With headless authentication, backend authentication can be segregated from frontend identity experiences, enhancing faster login experience. It enables each channel to provide unique UI experiences according to their brand guidelines.

In traditional AEM development, composite components are built by combining several atomic components through the data-sly-resource statement. For instance, Teaser component is built using image, text, and button components. However, in the SPA paradigm, neither React nor Angular implementations offer direct alternatives for this approach.

In general, when a page is retrieved from cache, all users view identical content. However, websites with gated or authenticated pages, certain sections — such as displaying a logged-in user's name or a login button for anonymous users — must remain dynamic and not be cached. Considering this scenario, Sling Dynamic Include (SDI) in AEM supports the dynamic generation of specific components, while also enabling the retrieval of others from cache.

In the pursuit of clean object-oriented code, the need to mock static methods may suggest design flaws or code smells, prompting consideration for refactoring. Nevertheless, there are situations where mocking static methods remains crucial despite refactoring efforts.

Web Optimized Image Delivery feature of AEM as a Cloud service delivers image assets from the DAM in WebP format. WebP can reduce the download size of an image by about 25% on average, which results in faster page loading.

Installing SSL certificate is crucial for securing websites, ensuring encryption of data transmission between users browser and the site to protect sensitive information. Let's explore the process of installing SSL certificate from PFX file, providing step-by-step instructions for a seamless setup.

In General, requests containing authentication information are not cached because the cached document is served to the client without authentication. However, if the requirements permit the caching of authenticated documents, this can be activated by setting the /allowAuthorized property to "1". Additionally, need to implement the AuthChecker module, which verifies users access permissions for a page before delivering the cached content.

In AEM backend Java development, Sling Models are utilized to retrieve dialog values using annotations. However, writing boilerplate code such as getter methods for passing these values to HTL can be tedious. To simplify this process, Project Lombok can be integrated, automatically generating the necessary boilerplate code with annotations like @Getter. This streamlines development tasks by eliminating the need for manual getter method creation.

Query Builder offers an easy way of querying the content repository of AEM. The API is built using the JCR API. AEM includes a Query Debugger tool that allows you to execute search queries on the JCR (Java Content Repository). Utilize this tool to perform a dry run of the AEM queries, optimize them, and then implement them into your code.

In accordance with specific project requirements, there might be a need to incorporate Multifield within the component dialog. Let's explore how to retrieve Multifield data and effectively utilize it in HTL.

AEM's dispatcher is not restricted and is publicly accessible by default. While unrestricted access is suitable for production environments, it's recommended to restrict access in lower environments such as dev and stage to your organization or specific users. This can be achieved through IP Allow Lists or Basic Authentication.

There are two potential scenarios for integrating Adaptive forms into AEM Sites: one for new projects and another for existing projects. Adobe has developed the aem-core-forms-components which can be used to incorporate forms standard components into AEM Sites.

Granite UI provides a large range of the basic components needed to create component dialog on the authoring environment. These components are constructed using Coral UI-based elements.

Creating a content fragment programmatically requires setting up a system user with Read permission for the content fragment model and Read, Modify, Create permissions for the asset folder where the content fragment will be stored. Additionally, ensure the content fragment model and asset folder are created for saving the content fragment.

In AEM components, it's often necessary to establish default values. This ensures that when components are dragged onto the page, they display predefined initial values. This functionality is achievable through the utilization of cq:template and cq:templatePath.