Day 14: Eventing in AEM

AEM Developer Series

There are various ways by which event handling can be done in AEM -

Event Listener - JCR level events with the observation
Event Handler - Sling level events
Workflow and Launchers
Schedulers with cron expressions

In this post, we will be discussing Event Handlers and Event Listeners. Eventing with Workflow and Launchers will be discussed in the next post while we have already discussed Schedulers in one of our previous posts. All the events in AEM can be viewed at - http://<host>:<port>/system/console/events.

Event Handlers

We can create an Event Handler by following below steps -

Write a service class that implements the EventHandler interface.
Register the service with property EventConstants.EVENT_TOPIC.
Implement the handleEvent(Event event) method to trigger the job.

Let us create a custom event handler that will be triggered when a page is activated and logs the topic for which the handler was registered.

Create a class CustomEventHandler and paste the following code in it.

service=EventHandler.class

We have implemented the handleEvent() method and it is logging the topic for which this event handler is registered.
Deploy the code and activate (publish) any page. You will see following traces in the logs

org.redquark.demo.core.listeners.CustomEventHandler Event is: org/apache/sling/api/resource/Resource/ADDED

org.redquark.demo.core.listeners.CustomEventHandler Event is: org/apache/sling/api/resource/Resource/CHANGED

Event Listeners

We can achieve event handling at the JCR level by implementing the EventListener interface in a class. JCR Observer is the lowest-level event handling in AEM. As its name indicates, it is at the JCR level and allows to listen to JCR-level events, gathered in sets (corresponding to persistence transactions). javax.jcr.observation.Event lists the following types:

Event.NODE_ADDED
Event.NODE_MOVED
Event.NODE_REMOVED
Event.PERSIST
Event.PROPERTY_ADDED
Event.PROPERTY_CHANGED
Event.PROPERTY_REMOVED

Let us create an event listener that listens to the event when a new node is added at a specified path.

Create a new class CustomEventListener and paste the following code in it

First, we need to get the javax.jcr.Session object to add the event listener. Here we are using the concept of service/system user in AEM.
After getting the session, we are adding the event listener and registering them for PROPERTY_ADDED and NODE_ADDED events on the path /apps/demoproject.
In the implemented onEvent(EventIterator events), we are logging the paths where a new node is added
Now go to the CRX Explorer and create a system user "demouser" and give all permissions on the root.
Go to ./system/console/configMgr and search for Apache Sling Mapper User Mapper Service and configure as per the below screenshot

User Mapper Service

Deploy the code and create new folder at location /apps/demoproject, you will see the following traces in the logs

org.redquark.demo.core.listeners.CustomEventListener Something has been added: /apps/demoproject/eventTest

org.redquark.demo.core.listeners.CustomEventListener Something has been added: /apps/demoproject/eventTest/jcr:primaryType

org.redquark.demo.core.listeners.CustomEventListener Something has been added: /apps/demoproject/eventTest/jcr:createdBy

org.redquark.demo.core.listeners.CustomEventListener Something has been added: /apps/demoproject/eventTest/jcr:created

Conclusion

Congratulations!! 🙋 we have successfully created event handlers and event listeners to understand JCR and Sling level events. I hope you enjoyed this post.

You can find the complete code of this project on my GitHub in this commit. Feel free to fork or open issues, if any.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this and would like to have suggestions from you to make it better.

Feel free to befriend me on Facebook, Twitter or Linked In or say Hi by email.

Happy Coding 😃

AEM Ninja

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