How to configure the Sling Model for the AEM Reactjs component

In the previous video we saw how to create an AEM component with react.js support but we found one problem, whenever we made a change we had to refresh the page to see the changes. In this second part I will show how to configure the sling model to expose the component's properties to fix the issue, above is the vid and below you will find some useful notes.

1. 1.

   Pre-reqs

   • Have access to an Adobe Experience Manager instance. You will need aem 6.4 Service Pack 2 or newer.
     Have Maven installed, understand how it works and also understand how to use Adobe's archetype, you can watch my video about maven here: Creating an AEM application using Maven and Adobe's archetype
2. 2.

   Exposing the model

   • Go to your IDE or editor and look for the model inside the core module, the model name is BasicModel and should be located inside the models package
   • First, let’s set the model’s adaptables to SlingHttpServletRequest and import the class

     import org.apache.sling.api.SlingHttpServletRequest;
     @Model(adaptables = SlingHttpServletRequest.class)
     

   • Then we need to import and implement the ComponentExporter interface and also define the getExportedType method to return the name for the resource type associated with the basic component

     import com.adobe.cq.export.json.ComponentExporter;
     ...
     public class BasicModel implements ComponentExporter {
         ...
     
         public String getExportedType() {
             return "react-simple-example/components/basic-component";
         }
     
         ...
     }
     

   • Finally import ExporterConstants and the Exporter annotation, add the ComponentExporter as an adapter and define the resourceType. For the exporter set the name as SLING_MODEL_EXPORTER_NAME and the extension as SLING_MODEL_EXTENSION.

     import org.apache.sling.models.annotations.Exporter;
     import com.adobe.cq.export.json.ExporterConstants;
     

     @Model(adaptables = SlingHttpServletRequest.class,
             adapters = {ComponentExporter.class},
             resourceType = BASIC_COMPONENT_RESOURCETYPE)
     @Exporter(name = ExporterConstants.SLING_MODEL_EXPORTER_NAME, extensions = ExporterConstants.SLING_MODEL_EXTENSION)
     

   • Let’s build and deploy the app again

     mvn clean install -PautoInstallPackage -Padobe-public
     

   • Go now to the page edit the component make some changes and click save, the changes get reflected right away
3. 3.

   Resources

   Github link for the code

   React Developer Tools

   ComponentExporter Interface

   Enabling JSON Export for a Component