Changing a CQ Component's Design Path

Usually, the default location used by the CQ Designs configuration works, however there are cases where you may want to set the designs to exist at a different location. For example, you may want multiple components to share a configuration or have all of the instances of a component on a site share the same configuration.

CQ provides the EditConfig object which can be used to configure how the edit dialog is loaded in CQ.

To configure your design path in Adobe CQ, first set the edit context path in the Edit Config object when in design mode:

String myComponentDesignPath = currentDesign.getPath() + "/jcr:content/mycomponent";
if (WCMMode.fromRequest(request) == WCMMode.DESIGN) {
log.debug("Setting content path to {}", myComponentDesignPath);
editContext.setContentPath(myComponentDesignPath);
}
Next, you will need to retrieve the resource you at the path you configured as a ValueMap, to be able to retrieve the properties you set.

Resource myComponentDesignRsrc = resource.getResourceResolver().getResource(myComponentDesignPath);
if (myComponentDesignRsrc != null) {
pageContext.setAttribute("myComponentDesign", myComponentDesignRsrc.adaptTo(ValueMap.class));
}

Finally, once you have the design properties set as a page context attribute, you can retrieve the values in your component JSP.

${myComponentDesign.attribute}

The only unfortunate thing about this approach is that the currentStyles variable will no longer point to the correct design path.