In an SPA the page component doesn’t provide the HTML elements of its child components, but instead delegates this to the SPA framework. This document explains how this makes the page component of an SPA unique.
The SPA Editor is the recommended solution for projects that require SPA framework based client-side rendering (for example, React or Angular).
The page component for an SPA doesn’t provide the HTML elements of its child components via a JSP or HTL file and resource objects. This operation is delegated to the SPA framework. The representation of child components is fetched as a JSON data structure (i.e. the model). The SPA components are then added to the page according to the provided JSON model. As such the page component initial body composition differs from its pre-rendered HTML counterparts.
The resolution and the management of the page model is delegated to a provided PageModelManager
module. The SPA must interact with the PageModelManager
module when it initializes to fetch the initial page model and register for model updates - mostly produced when the author is editing the page via the Page Editor. The PageModelManager
is accessible by SPA project as a npm package. Being an interpreter between AEM and the SPA, the PageModelManager
is meant to accompany the SPA.
To allow the page to be authored, a client library named cq.authoring.pagemodel.messaging
must be added to provide a communication channel between the SPA and the page editor. If the SPA page component inherits from the page wcm/core component then there are the following options to make the cq.authoring.pagemodel.messaging
client library category available:
customfooterlibs.html
of the page component.Don’t forget to limit the inclusion of the cq.authoring.pagemodel.messaging
category to the context of the page editor.
The communication data type is set an HTML element inside the AEM Page component using the data-cq-datatype
attribute. When the communication data type is set to JSON, the GET requests hit the Sling Model endpoints of a component. After an update occurs in the page editor, the JSON representation of the updated component is sent to the Page Model library. The Page Model library then warns the SPA of updates.
SPA Page Component - body.html
<div id="page"></div>
In addition to being good practice not to delay the DOM generation, the SPA framework requires the scripts to be added at the end of the body.
SPA Page Component -customfooterlibs.html
<sly data-sly-use.clientLib="${'/libs/granite/sightly/templates/clientlib.html'}"></sly>
<sly data-sly-test="${wcmmode.edit || wcmmode.preview}"
data-sly-call="${clientLib.js @ categories='cq.authoring.pagemodel.messaging'}"></sly>
<sly data-sly-call="${clientLib.js @ categories='we-retail-journal-react'}"></sly>
The meta resource properties that describe the SPA content:
SPA Page Component - customheaderlibs.html
<meta property="cq:datatype" data-sly-test="${wcmmode.edit || wcmmode.preview}" content="JSON"/>
<meta property="cq:wcmmode" data-sly-test="${wcmmode.edit}" content="edit"/>
<meta property="cq:wcmmode" data-sly-test="${wcmmode.preview}" content="preview"/>
<meta property="cq:pagemodel_root_url" data-sly-use.page="com.adobe.cq.sample.spa.journal.models.AppPage" content="${page.rootUrl}"/>
<sly data-sly-use.clientlib="/libs/granite/sightly/templates/clientlib.html">
<sly data-sly-call="${clientlib.css @ categories='we-retail-journal-react'}"/>
</sly>
The default model selector is statically set when requesting the Sling Model representation of a component.
cq:wcmmode
: WCM mode of the editors (for example, page, template)
cq:pagemodel_root_url
: URL of the root model of the App. Crucial when directly accessing a child page since the child page model is a fragment of the app root model. The [PageModelManager](/docs/experience-manager-65/sites-developing/spa-page-component.md)
then systematically recomposes the application initial model as entering the application from its root entry point.
cq:pagemodel_router
: Enable or disable the [ModelRouter](/docs/experience-manager-65/sites-developing/spa-routing.md)
of the PageModelManager
library
cq:pagemodel_route_filters
: Comma separated list or regular expressions to provide routes the [ModelRouter](/docs/experience-manager-65/sites-developing/spa-routing.md)
must ignore.
This document uses the We.Retail Journal app for demonstration purposes only. It should not be used for any project work.
Any AEM project should leverage the AEM Project Archetype, which supports SPA projects using React or Angular and leverages the SPA SDK.All SPA projects on AEM should be based on the Maven Archetype for SPA Starter Kit.
The synchronization of the overlays is guaranteed by the very same Mutation Observer provided by the cq.authoring.page
category.
When the routing capabilities are enabled, the assumption is that the JSON export of the SPA contains the different routes of the application thanks to the JSON export of the AEM navigation component. The JSON output of the AEM navigation component can be configured in the SPA’s root page content policy through the following two properties:
structureDepth
: Number corresponding to the depth of the tree exportedstructurePatterns
: Regex of array of regexes corresponding to the page to be exportedThis can be shown in the SPA sample content in /conf/we-retail-journal/react/settings/wcm/policies/we-retail-journal/react/components/structure/page/root
.