Monday 20 May 2019

How do we access the Magento product detail to AEM? - Magento AEM integration

There are cases where we need to access magento data to AEM. AEM By default supports magento plugin - AEM Extension to import data from Magento.

In some scenarios, Magento exposes the products over API's. In this case we can access the products from Magento using below explained method.

Note: In this example, the Magento API authorization is based on bearer token. The API response is in JSON format.




Java code - to invoke the API and access the products.
-----------------------------------------------------

 //Create a HTTP connection management
 DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();

 //HttpGet helps posting client data the server.
 HttpGet getMagentoRequest = new HttpGet("Magento API url");

 //Add authorization token as part of request header
 getMagentoRequest.addHeader("Authorization", "Bearer TOKEN");

 //Invoke the API to retrieve response
 HttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(getMagentoRequest);

 //Read the response using buffered readerr
 BufferedReader magentoBr = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader((response.getEntity().getContent())));

 String retrievedResult;
 String resultString="" ;

 //capture the entire response in sting format
 while ((retrievedResult = magentoBr.readLine()) != null) {
                resultString = resultString + retrievedResult;
            }
           
           
//Parse the JSON data present in the string format
JSONParser parse = new JSONParser();
//Type caste the parsed json data in json object
JSONObject jsonData = (JSONObject)parse.parse(resultString);

How to retrieve the JSON data?

Say we have below JSON fromat which has primary child and secondary child elements

{
    "id": "file",
    "value": "File",
    "popup": {
        "menuitem": [{
                "value": "New",
                "onclick": "CreateNewDoc()"
            }
        ]
    }
}



//get the individual item from JSON
String ID =  (String) jsonData.get( "id" );
//Now append ID on your bean class object


//Store the JSON object in JSON array as objects (For level 1 array element)

            JSONArray menuItems = (JSONArray) jobj.get("menuitem");
           
            for(int i=0;i<menuItems.size();i++)
            {
            //Store the JSON objects in an array
            //Get the index of the JSON object and print the values as per the index
            JSONObject childItem = (JSONObject)menuItems.get(i);
            String value = (String) childItem.get("value");
            //Now append value on your bean class object
            String onclick = (String) childItem.get("onclick");
            //Now append onclick on your bean class object
            }
           
           
Once we execute the code, we will have the parsed JSON Data available in Bean class.

Now in your HTL, iterate over the bean class objects and display the response.

Debug AEM 6.x using eclipse

Note: This is a tested approach and works for AEM 6.4

Step 1:
Add the Remote Debugging JVM Parameter


In Start.bat update 'CQ_JVM_OPTS' by adding below code

-agentlib:jdwp=transport=dt_socket,address=8000,server=y,suspend=n

Click on image to see it big

Step 2: Start a remote debugging session in Eclipse

  • Open Eclipse then choose Run > Debug Configurations.
  • Right-click 'Remote Java Applications' and select 'New'.
  • Select the AEM project under 'Project'.
  • Under 'connection Properties' enter the host. For local dev machine it is 'localhost'.
  • Enter the port configuration of the jvm parameter defined in step 1. In the example, we have given port number as 8000.
  • Save the configuration.
  • Now double-click the newly saved configuration in the Debug Configurations screen.

Demo Video

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AEM 6.5 Site related new features

AEM 6.5 Specific new features in Assets section

New Features in AEM 6.5 Forms

Foundation updates in AEM 6.5 which a developer should be aware of

Cloud Manager for AEM 6.5 New features


Storage concepts in AEM 6.5   

HTML Template language updates which needs to be observed with AEM 6.5

Wednesday 24 April 2019

What is Assets HTTP API?

We know that AEM Supports 3 ways of headless delivery in JSON format.

1) Content Services
2) Assets HTTP API
3) Custom Sling Model Exporter


The Assets HTTP API exposes folders and assets from AEM to external world over Restful HTTP APIs.




The API is exposed at http://[server:port]/api/assets and allows all CRUD operations on Assets, including binary, metadata, renditions, and comments.

At present the Assets HTTP API supports the following operations:
  • Retrieve a folder listing
  • Create a folder
  • Create an asset
  • Update asset binary
  • Update asset metadata
  • Create an asset rendition
  • Update an asset rendition
  • Create an asset comment
  • Copy a folder or asset
  • Move a folder or asset
  • Delete a folder, asset, or rendition

Note: Ensure the property 'Filter Methods' l: POST, PUT, DELETE are selected at location > system/console/configMgr>'Adobe Granite CSRF Filter'.

Monday 8 April 2019

Making SPA's(Single Page Applications) SEO(Search Engine Optimized) Friendly in AEM

AEM now supports SPA SDKs which helps to create Single Page Applications using Angular and React JS. A Single Page Application is a java script code which injects new content from a server into a page without the entire page getting reloaded in the browser. This gives the advantage of faster loading websites.


If we dont take care of SEO from beginning, we may have to put extra efforts to go back and fix the indexing issues later.

Why indexing required?

User comes to the site through various search engines and indexing site pages with this search engines are one of the major task during project implementation.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is the way which the search engine find the content in a website and index it. We need to ensure our site pages are SEO friendly by following SEO Guidelines. Every search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo having their own bots to crawl the site content.

This post is written considering the users are having a basic understanding about SEO technology.

Why SPA is not readily SEO Friendly?

The advantage of SPA is, they can even update entire pages or part of the page without making another request to the server or even changing the URL. In this case an entire HTML is not getting rendered. AJAX calls are used to load parts of the page using JSON snippets. SEO expects a fully built page for indexing.

Methods to make SPA s SEO Friendly

Below given some of the methods identified to make SPA pages SEO friendly. This solely depends on the usecase too.

Pretty URLs: Never use 'hashes' in URL's. Always go for SEO friendly pretty URL's instead.

Canonical URL's: 
Here a complete duplicate site would be created within the same url to ensure that crawlers would index the site pages properly.

Pre-rendering: In this scenario, we can run the app before deploying it, capture the page output and replace all HTML files with the captured output. Typically this is achieved with a headless browser (For e.g. Firefox Headless Mode, PhantomJS etc). Pre-rendering is a good choice because there is no additional server load, and therefore faster and cheaper than server side rendering.

Server-Side Rendering (SSR): In this case, pages that display constantly changing data which must be loaded dynamically at load time, or for pages that have user-specific content. Note here, Server hosting the website should have Node enabled to implement server side rendering.

HTML pushState: HTML 5 provides a History API called 'Push State'. The pushState method takes three arguments, a data 'state' object, a 'title' string, and a 'url'. When the pushState method is called, the url which is passed to it will appear in the browsers url window. This method can be used as an alternate indexing options for the SPA pages.


What are all the new features of AEM 6.5?

Below given the further details about new features.
 
AEM 6.5 Site related new features

AEM 6.5 Specific new features in Assets section

New Features in AEM 6.5 Forms

Foundation updates in AEM 6.5 which a developer should be aware of

Cloud Manager for AEM 6.5 New features

Monday 1 April 2019

Cloud Manager for AEM New features

Below given the major new features in AEM cloud manager released in January 2019

1) CI/CD Pipeline Enhancements

- Ability to schedule deployment trigger
- API integration through Adobe I/O
- Code quality check on non -production pipeline
- Creation of additional non -production pipeline

2) Reporting Dashboard
- Monitoring interactive dashboard, including visibility into
    i) basic system metrics
    ii) SLA reports
    iii) Security health status

3) Release Upgrades
- Evaluation of current code complexity
- Remediation through sandbox environment prior to upgrade
- Execution through blue-green deployment
 
What are all the new features of AEM 6.5?

Below given the further details about new features.
 
AEM 6.5 Site related new features

AEM 6.5 Specific new features in Assets section

New Features in AEM 6.5 Forms

Foundation updates in AEM 6.5 which a developer should be aware of

Cloud Manager for AEM 6.5 New features

Foundation updates in AEM 6.5 which a developer should be aware of

AEM 6.5 is going to be released on 8th April 2019 for general public.

Foundation:

AEM 6.5 - Java 11 Support

- New support for the Oracle JDK 11 "Long Term Support" releases (LTS)
- Oracle JDK Java 8 releases are also supported (LTS)
- Java 9, Java 10 and future non - LTS releases are not supported

AEM 6.5 Permission Management

- New permission management user interface for a consistent and simplified user experience
- Consolidated features previously distributed across multiple places (CRXDE Lite, User Admin, CRX Explorer)
- Simplified and advanced views
- Principal and repository views.

AEM 6.5 New Features Video



What are all the new features of AEM 6.5?

Below given the further details about new features.
 
AEM 6.5 Site related new features

AEM 6.5 Specific new features in Assets section

New Features in AEM 6.5 Forms

Foundation updates in AEM 6.5 which a developer should be aware of

Cloud Manager for AEM 6.5 New features


Storage concepts in AEM 6.5   

HTML Template language updates which needs to be observed with AEM 6.5

New Features in AEM 6.5 Forms

In this blog, we will understand about the latest features as part of AEM 6.5 forms

AEM 6.5 Forms are built with consideration of,  Mobile First Forms & Personalized Correspondence.

- Support new use cases with interactive communications
- OOTB Forms components for AEM Sites SPA
- Simplified OSGI workflow authoring
- Enhanced Adobe Sign integration


AEM Forms 6.5 - Output & Customer Communications
->Additional Capabilities to support new use cases are given below,

- Support for new layout and templates
- Introduction of new charting styles to address new wealth management use cases
- Auto generate web channel to retain Print Channel layouts
- Usability Enhancements , Drag and drop from FDM tree to bind variables and fields.

AEM Forms 6.5 - Simplified Workflow Authoring
-> Support for variables and re-usability of workflows

- Simplified Debugging with standardized workflow logs
- Support for custom data types in meta data
- Reduce dependency on ECMA scripts and manually populate meta data across workflow steps
- Introduction of an OOTB ability to declare variables/ meta data upfront and read and populate them across workflow steps
- Increased re-usability of workflows via invocation using multiple forms.

AEM Forms 6.5 - Enhanced Forms and Adobe Sign Integration
-> Support for cloud signatures in Adaptive Forms

- Enables compliance with most rigorous legal and regulatory requirements.
- Signing using Digital ID's based on PKI infrastructure based digital certificates

AEM Forms 6.5 - Embed Forms and Documents in AEM Sites SPA
->Embed Adaptive Forms and interactive Communications web channel in SPA based AEM Sites

- Offer compelling experiences to website users through Single Page Applications
- OOTB components o embed online forms and documents in SPA Sites.
- Aligns with AEM sites framework to support SPA based sites.

What are all the new features of AEM 6.5?

Below given the further details about new features.
 
AEM 6.5 Site related new features

AEM 6.5 Specific new features in Assets section

New Features in AEM 6.5 Forms

Foundation updates in AEM 6.5 which a developer should be aware of

Cloud Manager for AEM 6.5 New features