AEM Repository Structure

AEM is built on top of the OAK jcr:repository and even though we speak about applications, assets and content, in the underlying structure everything is a node in the jcr:repository.
AEM has defined a specific structure for where things are stored. The following folders are one that you should know about

• apps
• All applications have a folder in here
• Applications will be discussed later
• bin
• All servlets generally point to /bin
• You shouldn't install anything here
• content
• All content is installed here
• dam
• The DAM (Digital Asset Management) area is for storing assets
• Generally, you would create a subfolder for your application
• usergenerated
• Stores user-generated content
• Generally, you would create a subfolder for your application
• <system>
• You should have a folder for your system or base site
• The structure under this is for you to define, however, it is generally done in the following
• /content/<system>/<country>/<locale>/<content>
• This structure allows for language translations via the translation api
• While the structure can be anything you want it is best to define it early on as changing the structure at a later date is very problematic
• etc
• Additional configuration items
• There are a lot of different items in the /etc folder and I will only go through the ones I think are important to know about
• clientlibs
• These are the system clientlibs and while should NEVER be modified it gives you access to how AEM has done its own client libs
• designs
• This is where the possible designs (css/js/clientlibs) are stored for the different applications
• It is possible for a single application to have multiple designs for different visual layouts
• This is used if you have a single application for different countries/companies e.t.c and want to have the same components but also want them to look different
• map
• The location of all sling mappings
• For the publisher, I add map.publish to the /etc folder and configure it. This will be discussed in the ui.apps section on sling mappings
• tags
• All tags are installed here.
• While tags are used on the content I haven't had much use for them in the applications
• home
• All security objects are stored here
• users
• As it is named all users are stored in the user's folder
• It is recommended if you are creating specific users as part of your application deployment to add them to a new folder
• system
• System users are stored in the system folder
• If your application needs to access non-standard areas for writing data i.e. /content/usergenerated it is recommended to create a system user to do this work
• One thing to note is that users id's are very hard to figure out programmatically and when I have created users I generally create them in the useradmin screens and export them from the package manager
• Each user id MUST be unique
• groups
• As it is named all user groups are stored here
• It is recommended if you are creating specific groups as part of your application deployment to add them to a new folder
• Groups like users have to have a unique id so it is best to create them in useradmin and export them
• libs
• This is where AEM stores it's core components and structures
• Do not write anything to this area, I will explain later how to modify AEM structures
• system
• This is an AEM system folder and should not be used