Creating an AEM application using Maven and Adobe's archetype

In this tutorial, I show how to use Maven and Adobe's archetype to create an application from scratch and then build it and deploy it into AEM, also, the last part of the video shows how to do the same process using a Maven container using Docker, above is the vid and below you will find some useful notes.

1. 1.

   Pre-reqs

   • Have Docker installed
     Have Java installed Java SE Development Kit 8 Downloads (if you are going to use maven without docker)
2. 2.

   What is Maven

   • Maven is among many things a build automation tool which uses xml files called Project Object Model or POM files to describe different things about a project like what dependencies the project has, how to build and deploy a project and so on.
   • For dependency management, Maven uses two types of artifact repositories which can be categorized as:
   • Remote, which are typically publicly available on the internet like Maven Central or privately available inside your company’s internal network.
   • And local repositories, which are typically inside a .m2 folder inside your local file system where maven runs and it’s used for caching and storing local builds.
3. 3.

   Maven Archetypes

   • Maven archetypes can be used for creating new applications or modules without going through the hassle of configuring each piece of the app by hand, like the appropriate libraries or the plugins required, the different profiles to execute and many other different things needed to provide a seamless development experience. In our case adobe’s archetype will take care of even creating some mock content, example classes, components, configurations and other stuff for us so that we can start tinkering with our new app right away.

   •   
     mvn org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-archetype-plugin:2.4:generate "-DarchetypeGroupId=com.adobe.granite.archetypes" "-DarchetypeArtifactId=aem-project-archetype" "-DarchetypeVersion=19" "-DarchetypeCatalog=https://repo.adobe.com/nexus/content/groups/public/" "-DgroupId=co.dlighthouse.aem.firstapp" "-DartifactId=aem-first-app" "-Dversion=0.1.0-SNAPSHOT" "-Dpackage=co.dlighthouse.aem.firstapp" "-DappsFolderName=first-app" "-DconfFolderName=first-app" "-DartifactName=First App Example" "-DcomponentGroupName=First App Example" "-DcontentFolderName=first-app" "-DcssId=first-app" "-DpackageGroup=first-app" "-DsiteName=First App Example" “-DoptionAemVersion=6.4.0”
       
     

   • Adobe’s archetype will generate a multi module project, with modules for the bundle that contais all the java classes like Sling models and sling servlets, another module for creating the AEM package that contains the AEM components and a final one with the site and assets. There are two final modules used for testing.
4. 4.

   Building and deploying

   • For building and deploying the application into an Author instance running locally using the 4502 port

       
     mvn clean install -PautoInstallPackage -Padobe-public
       
     

5. 5.

   Docker and Maven

   • If you recall from the video, maven uses a local .m2 folder for the local repository and that whenever a dependency is missing there it will try to download it from the remote repository. When using Docker containers and given that they are isolated from each other if we just try to execute the maven commands it will try to download everything every time you use a new container.
   • To avoid that we need to use Docker Volumes which will allow us to define a local folder on your machine so that docker can use it for storing the artifacts downloaded by maven and so that they can be reused from different containers.
   • For defining a volume when starting a container you just need to add a -v parameter followed by a mapping, in which you specify the local folder in which the files are or should be located, a colon and the internal container’s folder

       
     docker run ... -v LOCAL-FOLDER:CONTAINER-FOLDER ...
       
     

   • If you want to check the current contents of a folder using the container you can use bash instead of the maven command at the end

       
     docker run -it --rm --name my-maven-project -v "$(pwd)":/usr/src/workdir -w /usr/src/workdir -v "$(pwd)"/.m2:/root/.m2 maven:3.6.1-jdk-8 /bin/bash
       
     

   • For creating the app you can use docker and append the complete maven command that uses the archetype after that

       
     docker run -it --rm --name my-maven-project -v "$(pwd)":/usr/src/workdir -w /usr/src/workdir -v "$(pwd)"/.m2:/root/.m2 maven:3.6.1-jdk-8 mvn org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-archetype-plugin:2.4:generate "-DarchetypeGroupId=com.adobe.granite.archetypes" "-DarchetypeArtifactId=aem-project-archetype" "-DarchetypeVersion=19" "-DarchetypeCatalog=https://repo.adobe.com/nexus/content/groups/public/" "-DgroupId=co.dlighthouse.aem.firstappdocker" "-DartifactId=aem-first-app-docker" "-Dversion=0.1.0-SNAPSHOT" "-Dpackage=co.dlighthouse.aem.firstappdocker" "-DappsFolderName=first-app-docker" "-DconfFolderName=first-app-docker" "-DartifactName=First App Docker Example" "-DcomponentGroupName=First App Docker Example" "-DcontentFolderName=first-app-docker" "-DcssId=first-app-docker" "-DpackageGroup=first-app-docker" "-DsiteName=First App Docker Example" “-DoptionAemVersion=6.4.0”
       
     

   • You can acomplish the same thing here by appending just the build MAven command after the docker one

       
     docker run -it --rm --name my-maven-project -v "$(pwd)":/usr/src/workdir -w /usr/src/workdir -v "$(pwd)"/../.m2:/root/.m2 maven:3.6.1-jdk-8 mvn clean install -Padobe-public -PautoInstallPackage -Daem.host=YOUR-MACHINE-IP
       
     

6. 6.

   Resources

   Java SE Development Kit 8 Downloads

   Maven Homepage

   Installing Apache Maven - Tips

   Configuring Maven

   Introduction to Repositories

   Where is Maven local repository?

   Guide to naming conventions on groupId, artifactId, and version

   Creating an Adobe Experience Manager 6.4 Project using Adobe Maven Archetype 13

   How to set up the Adobe Maven Repository

   Manage data in Docker

   Use volumes

   Dockerhub Maven