Extending the AEM Connector

The AEM connector provides a powerful extension system that lets you customize how content is extracted, transformed, and indexed from Adobe Experience Manager. Extensions are Java classes that implement interfaces from the aem-commons library — published on Maven Central.

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Maven Dependency

To create custom AEM extensions, add aem-commons to your project:

<!-- Source: https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.viglet.dumont/aem-commons -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.viglet.dumont</groupId>
    <artifactId>aem-commons</artifactId>
    <version>2026.1.19</version>
    <scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>

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Extension Interfaces

The AEM connector provides four extension interfaces:

Interface	Purpose	Config field
DumAemExtAttributeInterface	Custom logic for extracting or transforming individual field values	attributes[].className or sourceAttrs[].className
DumAemExtContentInterface	Extract additional content from AEM pages (e.g., .model.json)	models[].className
DumAemExtDeltaDateInterface	Custom delta date resolution for incremental indexing	sources[].deltaClass
DumAemExtUrlAttributeInterface	Specialized URL handling with ID extraction (extends DumAemExtAttributeInterface)	attributes[].className

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DumAemExtAttributeInterface

The most commonly used extension. Implement this to transform or extract individual attribute values with custom logic.

import com.viglet.dumont.connector.aem.commons.ext.DumAemExtAttributeInterface;
import com.viglet.dumont.connector.aem.commons.DumAemObject;
import com.viglet.dumont.connector.aem.commons.context.DumAemConfiguration;
import com.viglet.dumont.connector.aem.commons.mappers.*;
import com.viglet.turing.client.sn.TurMultiValue;

public class MyCustomAttribute implements DumAemExtAttributeInterface {

    @Override
    public TurMultiValue consume(
            DumAemTargetAttr dumAemTargetAttr,
            DumAemSourceAttr dumAemSourceAttr,
            DumAemObject aemObject,
            DumAemConfiguration dumAemConfiguration
    ) {
        // Example: extract a custom property and transform it
        String rawValue = aemObject.getAttributes()
            .get("myProperty").toString();
        return TurMultiValue.singleItem(rawValue.toUpperCase());
    }
}

Parameters:

Parameter	Description
DumAemTargetAttr	Target search field being populated (name, type)
DumAemSourceAttr	Source AEM property definition (name, className)
DumAemObject	AEM content node: path, title, template, jcrNode, jcrContentNode, lastModified, attributes
DumAemConfiguration	Connection config: url, username, rootPath, authorSNSite, publishSNSite, providerName

Built-in implementations:

Class	What it does
DumAemExtContentId	Returns the AEM page path as the document ID
DumAemExtContentUrl	Builds the full URL from the page path and URL prefix config
DumAemExtContentTags	Fetches tags from the /jcr:content.tags.json endpoint
DumAemExtCreationDate	Returns the jcr:created date
DumAemExtModificationDate	Returns the cq:lastModified or jcr:lastModified date
DumAemExtPublicationDate	Returns the last replication date
DumAemExtHtml2Text	Converts HTML content to plain text
DumAemExtPageComponents	Extracts text from responsive grid components
DumAemExtTypeName	Returns the content type name
DumAemExtSourceApps	Returns the provider name from configuration
DumAemExtSiteName	Returns the site name

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DumAemExtContentInterface

Implement this to fetch additional content from AEM — for example, calling the .model.json Sling Model exporter to get structured data.

import com.viglet.dumont.connector.aem.commons.ext.DumAemExtContentInterface;
import com.viglet.dumont.connector.aem.commons.bean.DumAemTargetAttrValueMap;

public class MyModelJsonExtractor implements DumAemExtContentInterface {

    @Override
    public DumAemTargetAttrValueMap consume(
            DumAemObject aemObject,
            DumAemConfiguration dumAemConfiguration
    ) {
        DumAemTargetAttrValueMap result = new DumAemTargetAttrValueMap();

        // Fetch the .model.json endpoint
        String url = dumAemConfiguration.getUrl()
            + aemObject.getPath() + ".model.json";
        // ... HTTP call to get JSON ...

        result.addWithSingleValue("fragmentPath",
            "/content/dam/fragment", false);
        return result;
    }
}

Referenced in the models[].className field of the configuration JSON.

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DumAemExtDeltaDateInterface

Customize how the connector determines the "last modified" date for incremental indexing.

import com.viglet.dumont.connector.aem.commons.ext.DumAemExtDeltaDateInterface;

public class MyDeltaDate implements DumAemExtDeltaDateInterface {

    @Override
    public Date consume(
            DumAemObject aemObject,
            DumAemConfiguration dumAemConfiguration
    ) {
        return Optional.ofNullable(aemObject.getLastModified())
                .map(Calendar::getTime)
                .orElse(null);
    }
}

Referenced in the sources[].deltaClass field of the configuration JSON.

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AEM Configuration JSON

The AEM connector is configured via a JSON file that defines sources, attributes, locale mappings, and content models. This file is placed in an export/ directory and imported at startup.

Full Example (WKND Site)

{
  "sources": [
    {
      "name": "WKND",
      "defaultLocale": "en_US",
      "localeClass": "com.viglet.dumont.connector.aem.commons.ext.DumAemExtLocale",
      "deltaClass": "com.example.MyDeltaDate",
      "endpoint": "http://localhost:4502",
      "username": "admin",
      "password": "admin",
      "oncePattern": "^/content/wknd/us/en/faqs",
      "rootPath": "/content/wknd",
      "contentType": "cq:Page",
      "author": true,
      "publish": true,
      "authorSNSite": "wknd-author",
      "publishSNSite": "wknd-publish",
      "authorURLPrefix": "http://localhost:4502",
      "publishURLPrefix": "https://wknd.site",
      "localePaths": [
        { "locale": "en_US", "path": "/content/wknd/us/en" },
        { "locale": "es", "path": "/content/wknd/es/es" }
      ],
      "attributes": [
        {
          "name": "id", "type": "STRING", "mandatory": true,
          "className": "com.viglet.dumont.connector.aem.commons.ext.DumAemExtContentId"
        },
        {
          "name": "title", "type": "TEXT", "mandatory": true,
          "facetName": { "default": "Titles", "pt_BR": "Títulos" }
        },
        {
          "name": "tags", "type": "STRING", "multiValued": true,
          "facet": true, "facetName": { "default": "Tags" },
          "className": "com.viglet.dumont.connector.aem.commons.ext.DumAemExtContentTags"
        },
        {
          "name": "url", "type": "STRING", "mandatory": true,
          "className": "com.viglet.dumont.connector.aem.commons.ext.DumAemExtContentUrl"
        }
      ],
      "models": [
        {
          "type": "cq:Page",
          "className": "com.example.MyModelJsonExtractor",
          "targetAttrs": [
            { "name": "title", "sourceAttrs": [{ "name": "jcr:title" }] },
            { "name": "tags",  "sourceAttrs": [{ "name": "cq:tags" }] },
            {
              "name": "text",
              "sourceAttrs": [{
                "className": "com.viglet.dumont.connector.aem.commons.ext.DumAemExtPageComponents"
              }]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Source Fields

Field	Type	Description
name	string	Source identifier (displayed in the admin console)
endpoint	string	AEM instance URL (e.g., http://localhost:4502)
username / password	string	AEM authentication credentials
rootPath	string	Content tree root to crawl (e.g., /content/wknd)
contentType	string	JCR node type to index (e.g., cq:Page)
defaultLocale	string	Fallback locale code (e.g., en_US)
localeClass	string	Class for locale resolution
deltaClass	string	Class implementing DumAemExtDeltaDateInterface
oncePattern	string	Regex — matching paths are indexed only once (never re-indexed)
author / publish	boolean	Enable indexing from author/publish environments
authorSNSite / publishSNSite	string	Turing ES SN Site names for each environment
authorURLPrefix / publishURLPrefix	string	Public URL prefixes for documents

Locale Paths

"localePaths": [
  { "locale": "en_US", "path": "/content/wknd/us/en" },
  { "locale": "es",    "path": "/content/wknd/es/es" }
]

Content found under each path is tagged with the corresponding locale.

Attribute Fields

Field	Type	Description
name	string	Field name in the search index
type	string	STRING, TEXT, or DATE
mandatory	boolean	Whether this field is required
multiValued	boolean	Whether this field holds multiple values
description	string	Human-readable description
facet	boolean	Expose as a facet filter in search results
facetName	object	Localized labels: { "default": "Tags", "pt_BR": "Etiquetas" }
className	string	Class implementing DumAemExtAttributeInterface — extracts the value instead of reading from JCR

Model Fields

Field	Type	Description
type	string	JCR node type this model applies to
className	string	Class implementing DumAemExtContentInterface
targetAttrs[].name	string	Target field (must match attributes[])
targetAttrs[].sourceAttrs[].name	string	JCR property to read (e.g., jcr:title)
targetAttrs[].sourceAttrs[].className	string	Class implementing DumAemExtAttributeInterface for custom extraction

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Creating a Custom AEM Extension

Step 1 — Create a Maven project

<project>
    <groupId>com.example</groupId>
    <artifactId>my-aem-extensions</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0</version>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.viglet.dumont</groupId>
            <artifactId>aem-commons</artifactId>
            <version>2026.1.19</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</project>

Step 2 — Implement your extension

package com.example.ext;

import com.viglet.dumont.connector.aem.commons.ext.DumAemExtAttributeInterface;
import com.viglet.turing.client.sn.TurMultiValue;

public class MyBreadcrumb implements DumAemExtAttributeInterface {
    @Override
    public TurMultiValue consume(DumAemTargetAttr target,
            DumAemSourceAttr source, DumAemObject aemObject,
            DumAemConfiguration config) {
        String path = aemObject.getPath()
            .replace(config.getRootPath(), "");
        return TurMultiValue.singleItem(
            String.join(" > ", path.split("/")));
    }
}

Step 3 — Build and deploy

mvn clean package
cp target/my-aem-extensions-1.0.0.jar /appl/viglet/dumont/aem/libs/

The libs/ directory must contain both aem-plugin.jar and your extension JAR.

Step 4 — Reference in the JSON

{
  "name": "breadcrumb",
  "type": "STRING",
  "className": "com.example.ext.MyBreadcrumb"
}

How classes are loaded

Extension classes are loaded via DumCustomClassCache using Class.forName(). Requirements:

• Public no-argument constructor
• On the classpath (via libs/ and -Dloader.path)
• Thread-safe (one instance is shared across all calls)

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Related Pages

Page	Description
AEM Connector	AEM connector features, configuration, and locale mapping
Installation Guide	How to deploy plugins with -Dloader.path
Developer Guide	Project structure, build, and contribution guide

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