AEM Actions

Purpose

AEM Actions is a mechanism serving as the underlying transport layer, which ensures that data is properly and safely transported from publish instances to author instance and is processed on the latter.

Features

• Seamless communication from AEM publish to author
• Messages contain key-value map, where key is a String and value is a String, Calendar or a primitive (int, float, etc.)
• You may register any number of author services listening to a given message topic

Prerequisites

CQ Actions version below 4.0.0:

• CQ 5.6.1 or AEM 6

CQ Actions version 4.0.0:

• AEM 6.2

AEM Actions version 6.0.0:

• AEM 6.3

Installation

Add dependencies to your project:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.cognifide.cq.actions</groupId>
    <artifactId>com.cognifide.cq.actions.api</artifactId>
    <version>4.0.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.cognifide.cq.actions</groupId>
    <artifactId>com.cognifide.cq.actions.core</artifactId>
    <version>4.0.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.cognifide.cq.actions</groupId>
    <artifactId><!-- choose appropriate transport type, see below --></artifactId>
    <version>4.0.0</version>
</dependency>

Usage

Implement data processing using com.cognifide.actions.api.ActionReceiver interface. Remember to create OSGi descriptors for the class:

@Service
@Component
public class MyActionReceiver implements ActionReceiver {

    private static final Logger LOGGER = LoggerFactory.getLogger(MyActionReceiver.class);

    @Override
    public String getType() {
        return "my-action";
    }

    @Override
    public void handleAction(ValueMap properties) {
        LOGGER.info("received action: " + properties);
    }

}

On the publish instance, whenever you would like to invoke any action on author instance just invoke following snippet:

@Reference
private ActionSubmitter actionSubmitter;

Map<String, Object> properties = new HashMap<String, Object>();
properties.put("company name", "Cognifide");
properties.put("city", "Poznan");
properties.put("awesome", true);
actionSubmitter.sendAction("my-action", properties);

Once, the sendAction() is invoked, the action will be send to the author instance and appropriate ActionReceiver will be called.

Transport types

AEM Actions supports a few types of the transport layer to get the message delivered from publish to author.

Reverse-replication

This is the classic approach, where messages are serialized into pages and the standard reverse-replication mechanism transfers them to the author. The author instance connects to the publish every 30 seconds to check if there is some user-generated content to be reverse-replicated, so it may take a while before the ActionReceiver gets its message.

• compatible with: CQ 5.6.1 and AEM 6 (in versions below 4.0.0) and with AEM 6.2 in version 4.0.0.
• bundle to use: com.cognifide.cq.actions.msg.replication.

Push

The author instance GETs the publish /bin/cognifide/cq-actions servlet. The servlet doesn't drop the connection, but holds it and puts each serialized action as a response fragments. Author confirms receiving action with a separate POST. The messages are delivers immediately.

• compatible with: CQ 5.6.1 and AEM 6 (in versions below 4.0.0) and with AEM 6.2 in version 4.0.0.
• bundle to use: com.cognifide.cq.actions.msg.push.

Websockets

The author connects to the publish using websocket. Created connection is used to deliver messages, which can be received immediately.

• compatible with: AEM 6 (in versions below 4.0.0). Currently this type of messaging is not supported on AEM 6.2.
• bundle to use: com.cognifide.cq.actions.msg.websocket.

Commercial Support

Technical support can be made available if needed. Please contact us for more details.

We can:

• prioritize your feature request,
• tailor the product to your needs,
• provide a training for your engineers,
• support your development teams.