How to programmatically access the AEM JCR

Last update: May 3, 2023

CREATED FOR:

  • Developer
CAUTION
AEM 6.4 has reached the end of extended support and this documentation is no longer updated. For further details, see our technical support periods. Find the supported versions here.

You can programmatically modify nodes and properties located within the Adobe CQ repository, which is part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud. To access the CQ repository, you use the Java Content Repository (JCR) API. You can use the Java JCR API to perform create, replace, update, and delete (CRUD) operations on content located within the Adobe CQ repository. For more information about the Java JCR API, see https://jackrabbit.apache.org/jcr/jcr-api.html.

NOTE
This development article modifies the Adobe CQ JCR from an external Java application. In contrast, you can modify the JCR from within an OSGi bundle using the JCR API. For details, see Persisting CQ data in the Java Content Repository.
NOTE
To use the JCR API, add the jackrabbit-standalone-2.4.0.jar file to your Java application’s class path. You can obtain this JAR file from the Java JCR API web page at https://jackrabbit.apache.org/jcr/jcr-api.html.
NOTE
To learn how to query the Adobe CQ JCR using the JCR Query API, see Querying Adobe Experience Manager Data using the JCR API.

Create a Repository instance

Although there are different ways to connect to a repository and establish a connection, this development article uses a static method that belongs to the org.apache.jackrabbit.commons.JcrUtils class. The name of the method is getRepository. This method takes a string parameter that represents the URL of the Adobe CQ server. For example http://localhost:4503/crx/server.

The getRepositorymethod returns a Repositoryinstance, as shown in the following code example.

//Create a connection to the AEM JCR repository running on local host
Repository repository = JcrUtils.getRepository("http://localhost:4503/crx/server");

Create a Session instance

The Repositoryinstance represents the CRX repository. You use the Repositoryinstance to establish a session with the repository. To create a session, invoke the Repositoryinstance’s loginmethod and pass a javax.jcr.SimpleCredentials object. The loginmethod returns a javax.jcr.Session instance.

You create a SimpleCredentialsobject by using its constructor and passing the following string values:

  • The user name;
  • The corresponding password

When passing the second parameter, call the String object’s toCharArraymethod. The following code shows how to call the loginmethod that returns a javax.jcr.Sessioninstance.

//Create a Session instance
javax.jcr.Session session = repository.login( new SimpleCredentials("admin", "admin".toCharArray()));

Create a Node instance

Use a Sessioninstance to create a javax.jcr.Node instance. A Nodeinstance lets you perform node operations. For example, you can create a new node. To create a node that represents the root node, invoke the Sessioninstance’s getRootNode method, as shown in the following line of code.

//Create a Node
Node root = session.getRootNode();

Once you create a Nodeinstance, you can perform tasks such as creating another node and adding a value to it. For example, the following code creates two nodes and adds a value to the second node.

// Store content
Node day = adobe.addNode("day");
day.setProperty("message", "Adobe CQ is part of the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite!");

Retrieve Node Values

To retrieve a node and its value, invoke the Nodeinstance’s getNodemethod and pass a string value that represents the fully-qualified path to the node. Consider the node structure created in the previous code example. To retrieve the day node, specify adobe/day, as shown in the following code:

// Retrieve content
Node node = root.getNode("adobe/day");
System.out.println(node.getPath());
System.out.println(node.getProperty("message").getString());

Create nodes in the Adobe CQ Repository

The following Java code example represents a Java class that connects to Adobe CQ, creates a Sessioninstance, and adds new nodes. A node is assigned a data value and then the value of the node and its path is written out to the console. When you are done with the Session, be sure to log out.

/*
 * This Java Quick Start uses the jackrabbit-standalone-2.4.0.jar
 * file. See the previous section for the location of this JAR file
 */

import javax.jcr.Repository;
import javax.jcr.Session;
import javax.jcr.SimpleCredentials;
import javax.jcr.Node;

import org.apache.jackrabbit.commons.JcrUtils;
import org.apache.jackrabbit.core.TransientRepository;

public class GetRepository {

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

try {

    //Create a connection to the CQ repository running on local host
    Repository repository = JcrUtils.getRepository("http://localhost:4503/crx/server");

   //Create a Session
   javax.jcr.Session session = repository.login( new SimpleCredentials("admin", "admin".toCharArray()));

  //Create a node that represents the root node
  Node root = session.getRootNode();

  // Store content
  Node adobe = root.addNode("adobe");
  Node day = adobe.addNode("day");
  day.setProperty("message", "Adobe CQ is part of the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite!");

  // Retrieve content
  Node node = root.getNode("adobe/day");
  System.out.println(node.getPath());
  System.out.println(node.getProperty("message").getString());

  // Save the session changes and log out
  session.save();
  session.logout();
  }
 catch(Exception e){
  e.printStackTrace();
  }
 }
}

After you run the full code example and create the nodes, you can view the new nodes in the CRXDE Lite, as shown in the following illustration.

chlimage_1-68

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