Assets HTTP API assets-http-api

Overview overview

The Assets HTTP API allows for create-read-update-delete (CRUD) operations on digital assets, including on metadata, on renditions, and on comments, together with structured content using Experience Manager Content Fragments. It is exposed at /api/assets and is implemented as REST API. It includes support for Content Fragments.

To access the API:

The API response is a JSON file for some MIME types and a response code for all MIME types. The JSON response is optional and may not be available, for example, for PDF files. Rely on the response code for further analysis or actions.

After the Off Time, an asset and its renditions are not available via the Assets web interface and through the HTTP API. The API returns 404 error message if the On Time is in the future or Off Time is in the past.

Content Fragments content-fragments

A content fragment is a special type of asset. It can be used to access structured data, such as texts, numbers, dates, among others. As there are several differences to standard assets (such as images or documents), some additional rules apply to handling content fragments.

For further information see Content Fragments Support in the Experience Manager Assets HTTP API.

Data model data-model

The Assets HTTP API exposes two major elements, folders and assets (for standard assets).

Additionally, it exposes more detailed elements for the custom data models that describe structured content in Content Fragments. See Content Fragment Data Models for further information.

Folders folders

Folders are like directories in traditional file systems. They are containers for other folders or asserts. Folders have the following components:

Entities: The entities of a folder are its child elements, which can be folders and assets.

Properties:

Links Folders expose three links:

Assets assets

In Experience Manager an asset contains the following elements:

For information about elements in Content Fragments see Content Fragments Support in Experience Manager Assets HTTP API.

In Experience Manager a folder has the following components:

The Assets HTTP API includes the following features:

Prerequisites

Retrieve a folder listing retrieve-a-folder-listing

Retrieves a Siren representation of an existing folder and of its child entities (subfolders or assets).

Request: GET /api/assets/myFolder.json

Response codes: The response codes are:

Response: The class of the entity returned is an asset or a folder. The properties of contained entities are a subset of the full set of properties of each entity. To obtain a full representation of the entity, clients should retrieve the contents of the URL pointed to by the link with a rel of self.

Create a folder create-a-folder

Creates a new sling: OrderedFolder at the given path. If a * is provided instead of a node name, the servlet uses the parameter name as node name. Accepted as request data is either a Siren representation of the new folder or a set of name-value pairs, encoded as application/www-form-urlencoded or multipart/ form- data, useful for creating a folder directly from an HTML form. Additionally, properties of the folder can be specified as URL query parameters.

An API call fails with a 500 response code if the parent node of the provided path does not exist. A call returns a response code 409 if the folder already exists.

Parameters: name is the folder name.

Request

Response codes: The response codes are:

Create an asset create-an-asset

Place the provided file at the provided path to create an asset in the DAM repository. If a * is provided instead of a node name, the servlet uses the parameter name or the file name as node name.

Parameters: The parameters are name for the asset name and file for the file reference.

Request

Response codes: The response codes are:

Update an asset binary update-asset-binary

Updates an asset’s binary (rendition with name original). An update triggers the default asset processing workflow to execute, if it is configured.

Request: PUT /api/assets/myfolder/myAsset.png -H"Content-Type: image/png" --data-binary @myPicture.png

Response codes: The response codes are:

Update asset metadata update-asset-metadata

Updates the asset metadata properties. If you update any property in the dc: namespace, the API updates the same property in the jcr namespace. The API does not sync the properties under the two namespaces.

Request: PUT /api/assets/myfolder/myAsset.png -H"Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"class":"asset", "properties":{"jcr:title":"My Asset"}}'

Response codes: The response codes are:

Sync metadata update between dc and jcr namespace sync-metadata-between-namespaces

The API method updates the metadata properties in the jcr namespace. The updates made using the user interface change the metadata properties in the dc namespace. To sync the metadata values between dc and jcr namespace, you can create a workflow and configure Experience Manager to execute the workflow upon asset edit. Use an ECMA script to sync the required metadata properties. The following sample script synchronizes the title string between dc:title and jcr:title.

var workflowData = workItem.getWorkflowData();
if (workflowData.getPayloadType() == "JCR_PATH")
{
 var path = workflowData.getPayload().toString();
 var node = workflowSession.getSession().getItem(path);
 var metadataNode = node.getNode("jcr:content/metadata");
 var jcrcontentNode = node.getNode("jcr:content");
if (jcrcontentNode.hasProperty("jcr:title"))
{
 var jcrTitle = jcrcontentNode.getProperty("jcr:title");
 metadataNode.setProperty("dc:title", jcrTitle.toString());
 metadataNode.save();
}
}

Create an asset rendition create-an-asset-rendition

Create an asset rendition for an asset. If request parameter name is not provided, the file name is used as rendition name.

Parameters: The parameters are name for name of the rendition and file as a file reference.

Request

Response codes: The response codes are:

Update an asset rendition update-an-asset-rendition

Updates respectively replaces an asset rendition with the new binary data.

Request: PUT /api/assets/myfolder/myasset.png/renditions/myRendition.png -H"Content-Type: image/png" --data-binary @myRendition.png

Response codes: The response codes are:

Add a comment on an asset create-an-asset-comment

Creates a new asset comment.

Parameters: The parameters are message for the message body of the comment and annotationData for the Annotation data in JSON format.

Request: POST /api/assets/myfolder/myasset.png/comments/* -F"message=Hello World." -F"annotationData={}"

Response codes: The response codes are:

Copy a folder or an asset copy-a-folder-or-asset

Copies a folder or asset available at the provided path to a new destination.

Request Headers: The parameters are:

Request: COPY /api/assets/myFolder -H"X-Destination: /api/assets/myFolder-copy"

Response codes: The response codes are:

Move a folder or an asset move-a-folder-or-asset

Moves a folder or asset at the given path to a new destination.

Request Headers: The parameters are:

Request: MOVE /api/assets/myFolder -H"X-Destination: /api/assets/myFolder-moved"

Do not use /content/dam in the URL. A sample command to move assets and overwriting existing ones is:

curl -u admin:admin -X MOVE https://[aem_server]:[port]/api/assets/source/file.png -H "X-Destination: https://[aem_server]:[port]/api/assets/destination/file.png" -H "X-Overwrite: T"

Response codes: The response codes are:

Delete a folder, an asset, or a rendition delete-a-folder-asset-or-rendition

Deletes a resource (-tree) at the provided path.

Request

Response codes: The response codes are:

Tips and limitations tips-best-practices-limitations