Quick Tips in AEM

A continuously-updated list of standalone notes, snippets, and tips extracted from full posts.

CRXDE Lite Isn’t Showing Directories
If CRXDE Lite isn’t showing or updating directories, it’s because its session has timed out Log back into CRXDE Lite by clicking on the user name in the top right

Multifields with different xtypes
To customize a multifield widget, create another widget inside it called fieldConfig propertyField.get(propertyName, new String[0]) defaults to an empty list instead of null

AEM Author Mode Loading Multiple Sidekicks
To check if a page is standalone, compare currentPage.getPath() to resourcePage.getPath()
The CQ Sidekick is loaded within pages by including /libs/wcm/core/components/init/init.jsp

Fetching Properties From Dialogs
Use the geometrix samples to copy-paste dialog nodes and other boilerplate structures

Edit mode is reached by clicking the pencil icon in the CQ Sidekick
A component must have some kind of content to be selectable for editing in Edit mode. Double-click a component in edit mode to bring up its dialog configuration

CRX Explorer is a good tool for exploring properties set by dialogs
Within a component, properties.get will fetch its own properties
The second parameter of properties.get specifies a default value to get in case no property. The second parameter of properties.get cannot be null. Instead, specify {className}.class

To fetch properties from another component, convert it to a Node and call getProperty node.getProperty will fail when a property is not set. First, call node.hasProperty

To check if a node exists, compare resourceResolver.getResource({path}).getResourceType() to Resource.RESOURCE_TYPE_NON_EXISTING

Creating OSGi Bundles
OSGi bundles are standard jar files with extra dependency metadata in META-INF/MANIFEST.MF

AEM doesn’t use a /lib folder to drop in 3rd party libraries. Instead it uses OSGi bundles won’t load unless their dependencies are loaded as OSGi bundles