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Create your first OSGi bundle

Last update: March 25, 2025

Applies to:
Experience Manager 6.4
Experience Manager 6.5

Topics:
Adaptive Forms

CREATED FOR:

Beginner
Developer

An OSGi bundle is a Java™ archive file that contains Java code, resources, and a manifest that describes the bundle and its dependencies. The bundle is the unit of deployment for an application. This article is meant for developers wanting to create OSGi service or a servlet using AEM Forms 6.4 or 6.5. To build your first OSGi bundle please follow the following steps:

Install JDK

Install the supported version of JDK. I have used JDK1.8. Make sure you have added JAVA_HOME in your environment variables and is pointing to the root folder of your JDK installation.
Add the %JAVA_HOME%/bin to the path

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NOTE

Do not use JDK 15. It is not supported by AEM.

Test your JDK version

Open a new command prompt window and type: java -version. You should get back the version of JDK identified by the JAVA_HOME variable

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Install Maven

Maven is a build automation tool used primarily for Java projects. Please follow the following steps to install maven on your local system.

Create a folder called maven in your C drive
Download the binary zip archive
Extract the contents of the zip archive into c:\maven
Create an environment variable called M2_HOME with a value of C:\maven\apache-maven-3.6.0. In my case, the mvn version is 3.6.0. At the time of writing this article the latest maven version is 3.6.3
Add the %M2_HOME%\bin to your path
Save your changes
Open a new command prompt and type in mvn -version. You should see the mvn version listed as shown in the screenshot below

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Install Eclipse

Install the latest version of eclipse

Create your first project

Archetype is a Maven project templating toolkit. An archetype is defined as an original pattern or model from which all other things of the same kind are made. The name fits as we are trying to provide a system that provides a consistent means of generating Maven projects. Archetype helps authors create Maven project templates for users, and provides users with the means to generate parameterized versions of those project templates.
To create your first maven project, please follow the following steps:

Create a new folder called aemformsbundles in your C drive
Open a command prompt and navigate to c:\aemformsbundles
Run the following command in your command prompt

mvn -B org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-archetype-plugin:3.2.1:generate -D archetypeGroupId=com.adobe.aem -D archetypeArtifactId=aem-project-archetype -D archetypeVersion=36 -D appTitle="My Site" -D appId="mysite" -D groupId="com.mysite" -D aemVersion=6.5.13

On successful completion you should see a build success message in your command window

Create eclipse project from your maven project

Change your working directory to mysite
Execute mvn eclipse:eclipse from the command line. The command reads your pom file and creates Eclipse projects with correct metadata so that Eclipse understands project types, relationships, classpath, etc.

Import the project into eclipse

Launch Eclipse

Go to File -> Import and select Existing Maven Projects as shown here

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Click Next

Select the c:\aemformsbundles\mysite by clicking the Browse button

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NOTE

You may select to import the appropriate modules depending on your needs. Select and import the core module only, if you are only going to create Java code in your project.

Click Finish to start the import process

Project is imported into Eclipse and you see a number of mysite.xxxx folders

Expand the src/main/java under the mysite.core folder. This is the folder in which you are writing most of your code.

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Include AEMFD Client SDK

You need to include the AEMFD client sdk in your project to take advantage of various services that come with AEM Forms. Please refer AEMFD Client SDK to include the appropriate client SDK in your Maven project. You have to include the AEM FD Client SDK in the dependencies section of pom.xml of the core project as shown below.

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.adobe.aemfd</groupId>
    <artifactId>aemfd-client-sdk</artifactId>
    <version>6.0.122</version>
</dependency>

To build your project, please follow the following steps:

Open command prompt window
Navigate to c:\aemformsbundles\mysite\core
Execute the command mvn clean install -PautoInstallBundle
The above command builds and installs the bundle in the AEM server running on http://localhost:4502. The bundle is also available on the file system at
C:\AEMFormsBundles\mysite\core\target and can be deployed using Felix web console

Next Steps

Create OSGi service

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