AEM Connector

The AEM Connector indexes content from Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) author and publish instances. It consists of two components: an AEM server-side bundle (OSGi event listeners installed inside AEM) and a connector plugin (Java JAR loaded into dumont-connector.jar).

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How It Works

The AEM connector receives indexing requests, then accesses AEM to traverse the content tree, fetch page data, extract tags as facets, and optionally call .model.json for custom attributes.

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sequenceDiagram
    participant AEM as AEM Instance
    participant EVT as AEM Event Listener<br/>(OSGi Bundle)
    participant API as Dumont Connector<br/>(AEM Plugin)
    participant SE as Turing

    Note over AEM,EVT: Option 1: Automatic (Event-Driven)
    AEM->>EVT: Page published / modified / deleted
    EVT->>API: POST /api/v2/aem/index/{source}<br/>{paths, event}

    Note over API: Option 2: Manual (Postman / curl)
    Note over API: Option 3: Turing Admin Console<br/>(Integration → Indexing Manager)

    API->>AEM: GET {path}.infinity.json
    AEM-->>API: Full JCR node tree (JSON)
    API->>AEM: GET {path}/jcr:content.tags.json
    AEM-->>API: Tags → converted to facets
    API->>AEM: GET {path}.model.json (optional)
    AEM-->>API: Sling Model attributes
    API->>API: Traverse child nodes recursively
    API->>SE: Index documents (via pipeline)

Ways to Trigger Indexing

Method	How	When to use
AEM Event Listeners	Install the aem-server OSGi bundle inside AEM, it automatically sends indexing requests when content is published, modified, or deleted	Production: real-time content sync
Adobe I/O Events	Register a webhook in Adobe Developer Console, optionally with the journal consumer as its recovery path	Production on AEM as a Cloud Service, where you cannot install a bundle
Manual API Call	Send a POST request to /api/v2/aem/index/{source} with a JSON payload containing paths and event type	Development, testing, one-off re-indexing
Viglet Turing Admin Console	Use Enterprise Search → Integration → Indexing Manager to select paths and trigger indexing/deindexing/publishing operations	Operations: selective re-indexing via UI

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Content Discovery Strategies

How the connector discovers content during a full Index All operation depends first on the source’s Fetch Strategy, which decides which tier is asked.

With the default Author servlets strategy, two discovery mechanisms are available, selected globally:

Strategy	Property	How it discovers content
Tree Traversal (default)	dumont.aem.querybuilder=false	Recursively walks the content tree from the root path using infinity.json, follows parent→child relationships
QueryBuilder	dumont.aem.querybuilder=true	Uses AEM’s native QueryBuilder API (/bin/querybuilder.json) to find all content matching the configured content type in paginated batches

Both read author-tier Sling servlets. With the Publish delivery APIs strategy the connector uses .model.json on the publish tier instead: see Publish-Tier Discovery below.

QueryBuilder Discovery

When enabled, the connector queries the QueryBuilder endpoint instead of walking the tree:

GET http://localhost:4502/bin/querybuilder.json?path=/content/wknd&type=cq:Page&p.hits=slim&p.limit=500&p.offset=0

Each page of discovered paths is immediately processed in parallel using a configurable thread pool: the full path list is never held in memory.

Enable it by adding the following properties to application.yaml or as JVM arguments:

dumont:
  aem.querybuilder: true
  aem.querybuilder.parallelism: 10   # number of parallel threads (default)

Or via command-line:

java -Ddumont.aem.querybuilder=true -Ddumont.aem.querybuilder.parallelism=10 -jar dumont-connector.jar

Content Type required

QueryBuilder discovery requires a Content Type (e.g., cq:Page) configured in the AEM source. Without it, the command logs a warning and skips processing.

When to use QueryBuilder

QueryBuilder is recommended for large content trees where recursive traversal is slow. It reduces the number of HTTP round-trips to AEM by discovering all paths in bulk, then fetching content in parallel. For small sites (< 1 000 pages), the default tree traversal is typically sufficient.

Publish-Tier Discovery (AEM as a Cloud Service)

Neither infinity.json nor /bin/querybuilder.json is served by an AEM as a Cloud Service publish tier: infinity.json is a dispatcher-blocked pattern by default, and QueryBuilder is not exposed on publish at all. Pointing the connector at author instead means holding an authoring credential and reading unpublished content for a job that only ever needed published pages.

Set the source’s Fetch Strategy to Publish delivery APIs and the connector reads the published delivery surface instead:

GET https://delivery-p12345-e67890.adobeaemcloud.com/content/wknd/us/en.model.json

.model.json is served by Core Components, is CDN-fronted, and needs no author access. The connector uses it for both jobs the author servlets were doing:

• Discovery and traversal: the page model’s :children lists the pages below it. When the root is a hierarchy root, that is the whole sub-tree in one request; otherwise the connector descends child by child.
• Page metadata: title, template and last-modified date come from the same response. Content the delivery tier serves is published by definition, so every discovered page is treated as delivered.

Attribute extraction already read .model.json, so an extension written for the author strategy needs no change.

Requires Core Components

The delivery strategy depends on .model.json being served for the pages you index, which means Core Components (the Sling Model exporter) on the templates in scope. Content Fragments and Assets are not yet reached through their own delivery endpoints: index those through the author strategy.

QueryBuilder is ignored for a delivery source even when dumont.aem.querybuilder=true is set globally.

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The Indexing Flow (Step by Step)

When the connector receives an indexing request (from any of the three triggers), it processes each path as follows:

1. Fetch the Content Node

The connector calls AEM’s infinity.json endpoint to get the full JCR node tree:

GET http://localhost:4502/content/wknd/us/en/my-page.infinity.json

This returns the complete node hierarchy as JSON: all properties, child nodes, and metadata. The connector filters out internal nodes (prefixed with jcr:, rep:, cq:).

A source on the Publish delivery APIs fetch strategy reads .model.json on the delivery host at this step instead: the remaining steps are unchanged.

2. Extract Tags as Facets

For each page, the connector fetches tags:

GET http://localhost:4502/content/wknd/us/en/my-page/jcr:content.tags.json

Tags are automatically converted to facets in the search index, no manual configuration needed. Each tag becomes a filterable value in the Turing facet panel.

3. Fetch Model JSON (Optional: Requires Configuration)

The connector does not call .model.json by default. To enable it, you must configure a DumAemExtContentInterface implementation in the models section of the export JSON:

"models": [
  {
    "type": "cq:Page",
    "className": "com.viglet.dumont.connector.aem.sample.ext.DumAemExtSampleModelJson",
    "targetAttrs": [ ... ]
  }
]

When this is configured, the extension class fetches the Sling Model exporter:

GET http://localhost:4502/content/wknd/us/en/my-page.model.json

This returns structured content from AEM’s Sling Models: useful for extracting custom attributes like content fragment paths, component data, or experience fragment references. See Extending the AEM Connector for how to implement DumAemExtContentInterface and the full JSON configuration reference.

4. Traverse the Content Tree

Starting from the configured root path (e.g., /content/wknd), the connector recursively traverses all child nodes that match the configured content type (e.g., cq:Page). Each matching node goes through steps 1–3 above.

5. Map Attributes and Index

For each page, the connector:

• Applies attribute mappings from the configuration (global attributes + model-specific source→target mappings)
• Runs custom extension classes (if configured via className)
• Creates a Job Item for both author and publish environments (if enabled)
• Sends the Job Item through the Viglet Dumont pipeline to Turing

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Dependency Tracking and Cascade Re-Indexing

When a page references other content (experience fragments, content fragments, shared components, linked pages), the AEM connector can automatically re-index every page that depends on an updated path. This prevents stale content from surviving in the index when a shared resource changes.

How Dependencies Are Discovered

As each node’s .infinity.json is fetched, the connector walks the JSON recursively and collects every string value that starts with /content: those paths become the document’s dependency set. The extraction is completely automatic; no configuration on the AEM side is required.

The dependency set is then attached to the DumJobItemWithSession and persisted alongside the indexing record (dum_connector_dependency table) whenever the record is saved or updated.

When the Cascade Fires

Dependency processing runs only on standalone (incremental) indexing, it is not triggered by Index All:

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sequenceDiagram
    participant EVT as AEM Event Listener<br/>(or Manual API)
    participant API as Dumont Connector
    participant DB as Indexing Store
    participant SE as Turing

    EVT->>API: POST /api/v2/aem/index/{source}<br/>{paths: ["/content/wknd/.../header"]}
    API->>SE: Index the updated path(s)
    API->>DB: findObjectIdsByDependencies(paths)
    DB-->>API: IDs of pages that reference those paths
    API->>SE: Re-index the dependent pages

1. A page is indexed via event listener, manual API call, or the Indexing Manager.
2. The main indexing command runs first (the Job Item is produced and sent).
3. DependencyHandler queries the indexing store for every document whose stored dependency list contains one of the updated paths.
4. A second IndexPaths command re-indexes those dependents, which in turn also have their own dependencies refreshed.

Configuration

A single property controls both the persistence of dependency links and the cascade behavior:

Property	Default	Description
dumont.dependencies.enabled	false (shipped in application.yaml)	Persist /content/* dependencies on each indexing record and trigger cascade re-indexing on standalone operations

Enable it in application.yaml:

dumont:
  dependencies.enabled: true

Or via JVM argument:

java -Ddumont.dependencies.enabled=true -jar dumont-connector.jar

Two effects from one flag

When false:

• New/updated indexing records are saved without a dependency set (the join table stays empty for those rows)
• DependencyHandler.processDependencies() returns early and no cascade re-indexing happens

After turning the flag on, previously indexed content still has no stored dependencies: run a Reindex All to populate the dependency table for existing records.

Performance impact

Every standalone index operation performs an extra lookup plus a second indexing pass for any dependents. On sources with heavily shared components (templates, headers/footers, fragments), a single page update can fan out into many re-indexations: budget accordingly, or leave the flag off and rely on scheduled full reindexing.

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AEM Server-Side Bundle (Event Listeners)

The aem-server module is an OSGi bundle installed inside AEM. It provides event listeners that automatically notify the Dumont connector when content changes.

Events Captured

Event Listener	OSGi Topic	Trigger	Path Filter	Dumont Action
DumAemPageEventHandler	com/day/cq/wcm/api/page	Page created / modified	n/a	INDEXING
DumAemPageReplicationEventHandler	com/day/cq/replication	Page activated (published)	excludes /content/dam/*	PUBLISHING
DumAemPageReplicationEventHandler	com/day/cq/replication	Page deactivated (unpublished)	excludes /content/dam/*	UNPUBLISHING
DumAemContentFragmentReplicationEventHandler	com/day/cq/replication	Content Fragment activated	only /content/dam/*	PUBLISHING
DumAemContentFragmentReplicationEventHandler	com/day/cq/replication	Content Fragment deactivated	only /content/dam/*	UNPUBLISHING
DumAemResourceEventHandler	org/apache/sling/api/resource/Resource/*	DAM asset created / modified (dam:Asset, dam:AssetContent) under /content	n/a	INDEXING

Page vs. Content Fragment replication

Both replication handlers subscribe to the same OSGi topic, but each one inspects the paths in the ReplicationAction and skips anything outside its domain. The page handler ignores everything under /content/dam/; the Content Fragment handler only processes paths under /content/dam/. Replication types other than ACTIVATE / DEACTIVATE (e.g., INTERNAL_POLL, TEST) are logged at debug level and discarded.

Diagnostic listeners

The module also ships DumAemAllComEventHandler and DumAemAllOrgEventHandler, which log every event under com/* and org/* topics. They perform no indexing and exist only to help diagnose which topics AEM is actually firing: useful when event-driven indexing seems not to trigger. They can be left in place safely; log noise can be trimmed via the AEM logger configuration.

OSGi Configuration

The event listeners are configured in AEM via OSGi Configuration (AEM → Web Console → Configuration):

Setting	Description
Enabled	Toggle to enable/disable automatic indexing
Host	Dumont connector URL (e.g., http://dumont-server:30130)
Config Name	Source name configured in the Dumont connector

HTTP Payload

When an event fires, the bundle sends:

POST http://dumont-server:30130/api/v2/aem/index/{configName}
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "paths": ["/content/wknd/us/en/my-page"],
  "event": "INDEXING"
}

Event types: INDEXING, DEINDEXING, PUBLISHING, UNPUBLISHING.

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Adobe I/O Events

On AEM as a Cloud Service you cannot install the OSGi bundle above. Adobe I/O Events is the route instead: register the connector as a consumer in Adobe Developer Console and AEM emits the same publish/modify/unpublish/delete events as CloudEvents.

Adobe delivers them two ways, and the connector reads both through one handler, so an event means the same thing whichever way it arrives.

The webhook (push)

Register this URL as the webhook of an event registration, one per source:

POST https://dumont-server:30130/api/v2/aem/webhook/{source}

Adobe verifies the registration with a GET carrying a challenge query parameter, which the same endpoint echoes back. Set dumont.aem.webhook.adobe-io.client-id to the credential’s API Key (Client ID) and the connector rejects any payload whose recipient_client_id does not match with 401. Left unset, the endpoint is open and logs a warning at startup: development only.

Event types ending in .published, .modified, .unpublished and .deleted are acted on; anything else is answered 200 and ignored. The path indexed is the event’s data.resource_path.

The journal (pull, recovery)

A pushed webhook has no recovery. One lost to a 502, a rolling restart, a network partition or an expired certificate is gone: Adobe retries for a bounded window and then drops it, and the content it described stays at whatever version the index last saw. The scheduled audit eventually notices, but it is a full re-discovery on a cron most deployments set to hours.

The journal is the same ordered event stream, pulled at your own cadence behind a cursor:

dumont:
  aem:
    journal:
      enabled: true
      poll-ms: 60000
      client-id: <API Key (Client ID)>
      client-secret: <Client Secret>
      sources:
        wknd: https://events-va6.adobe.io/events/organizations/1/integrations/2/3

The journal URL is shown on the event registration in Adobe Developer Console. Journalling is enabled automatically on every registration, so this costs no extra Adobe-side setup.

Each poll reads a page of events, dispatches them, and only then persists the page’s position. That ordering is what makes recovery exact: after downtime, a failed page or a crash mid-page, the next poll resumes from the last committed position instead of skipping ahead. Re-dispatching an event you already indexed is harmless (indexing a path is idempotent), while skipping one is not.

Property	Default	Purpose
dumont.aem.journal.enabled	false	Master switch. Off means the webhook alone, exactly as before
dumont.aem.journal.poll-ms	60000	Delay between the end of one poll and the start of the next
dumont.aem.journal.batch-size	100	Events requested per page
dumont.aem.journal.max-pages-per-poll	20	Pages followed in one poll, so a large backlog drains across polls
dumont.aem.journal.client-id	–	OAuth Server-to-Server API Key (Client ID)
dumont.aem.journal.client-secret	–	OAuth Server-to-Server Client Secret
dumont.aem.journal.sources.<source>	–	Journal URL for that Dumont source

Run both

The webhook stays the low-latency route: an editor publishes and the page is indexed within seconds. The journal is the floor under it, catching what a push drops. Enabling the journal does not disable or change the webhook.

Replaying deliberately

To re-consume from a point in the journal, clear the stored position: the cursor lives in the connector’s aem_system table under the key {source}/journal-position. Removing it makes the next poll start from the beginning of the journal’s retention window.

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Manual API Triggering

You can trigger indexing manually via HTTP (Postman, curl, etc.):

Index Specific Paths

curl -X POST http://localhost:30130/api/v2/aem/index/WKND \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "paths": ["/content/wknd/us/en/about"],
    "event": "INDEXING",
    "recursive": true
  }'

Deindex Specific Paths

curl -X POST http://localhost:30130/api/v2/aem/index/WKND \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "paths": ["/content/wknd/us/en/old-page"],
    "event": "DEINDEXING"
  }'

Request Body Fields

Field	Type	Default	Description
paths	string[]	(required)	AEM content paths to process
event	string	INDEXING	INDEXING, DEINDEXING, PUBLISHING, or UNPUBLISHING
recursive	boolean	false	Traverse child nodes recursively
attribute	string	ID	ID (path-based) or URL (URL-based)

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Source Configuration

Each AEM source defines connection details, content scope, author/publish environments, locale mappings, and delta tracking. Sources are configured in the Turing Admin Console under Enterprise Search → Integration → [your AEM instance] → Sources.

For the JSON configuration file used by custom extensions (attributes, models, locale paths), see Extending the AEM Connector.

General

Field	Description
Name	Source identifier
Endpoint	URL of the AEM instance (e.g., http://localhost:4502)
Username / Password	Credentials for authenticated access to the AEM instance

Root Path

Defines the root content path within the AEM repository from which content is traversed (e.g., /content/wknd). All child nodes matching the configured content type are indexed recursively from this path.

Content Types

Field	Description
Content Type	Primary content type to be indexed (e.g., cq:Page)
Sub Type	Optional sub-type filter within the content type

Fetch Strategy

Chooses which AEM tier the connector reads, per source: see Publish-Tier Discovery for what changes.

Field	Description
Fetch Strategy	Author servlets (infinity.json) (the default, for on-premise and AMS) or Publish delivery APIs (model.json), for AEM as a Cloud Service
Delivery URL Prefix	Host the delivery requests are sent to, e.g. https://delivery-p12345-e67890.adobeaemcloud.com. Shown only for the delivery strategy; leave blank to reuse the publish URL prefix

Delta Tracking

Controls incremental indexing: how the connector detects which content has changed since the last run.

Field	Description
Once Pattern	Pattern used to identify content that should only be indexed once
Delta Class	Fully-qualified Java class name responsible for detecting changed content since the last run (see Extending AEM for custom implementations)

Author / Publish

Configures which AEM environments are indexed and how they map to Turing Semantic Navigation Sites.

Field	Description
Author	Enable indexing from the AEM author environment
Publish	Enable indexing from the AEM publish environment
SN Site (Author)	Semantic Navigation Site that receives author content
SN Site (Publish)	Semantic Navigation Site that receives publish content
URL Prefix (Author)	URL prefix prepended to document paths in the author index
URL Prefix (Publish)	URL prefix prepended to document paths in the publish index

Locales

Maps content language codes to repository paths.

Field	Description
Default Locale	Locale used when no language-specific path is matched
Locale Class	Fully-qualified Java class name responsible for resolving document locale (see Extending AEM for custom implementations)
Locale → Path	Dynamic list mapping each locale code (e.g., en_US) to its root path in the repository

Source Actions

Each source has two action buttons available in the Turing admin console:

• Index All: triggers a full indexing run for all content in this source
• Reindex All: forces a full reindexation, replacing all previously indexed content

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Indexing Rules

Indexing Rules allow you to filter content during indexing, for example, to exclude error pages or draft content before it reaches the search index. Rules are configured in the Turing Admin Console under Enterprise Search → Integration → [your AEM instance] → Indexing Rules.

Field	Description
Name	Rule identifier (required)
Description	Purpose of this rule
Source	The source this rule applies to
Attribute	Document field to evaluate (e.g., template)
Rule Type	How the rule is applied: currently supports IGNORE (skip documents that match)
Values	Dynamic list of values that trigger the rule (add or remove entries)

Example: A rule with Attribute = template, Rule Type = IGNORE, and Values = [error-page] will prevent any document with template:error-page from being indexed.

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Indexing Manager

The Indexing Manager provides a stepper form in the Turing Admin Console for targeting specific documents for manual operations.

Operation	Description	Colour
INDEXING	Index specific content	Blue
DEINDEXING	Remove specific content from the index	Red
PUBLISHING	Publish content	Green
UNPUBLISHING	Unpublish content	Orange

Each operation step allows you to:

• Select the Source to operate on
• Choose the attribute to identify documents: ID or URL
• Enter one or more specific values (IDs or URLs)
• Expand Advanced Settings to toggle Recursive mode, which traverses child content in hierarchical repositories

Concurrency

The connector supports two execution modes:

Mode	When	Behavior
Exclusive	Full crawl (indexAll)	Only one full crawl per source at a time
Standalone	Specific paths (event-driven / manual)	Multiple concurrent updates allowed

Reactive (parallel) processing can be enabled for large sites:

dumont.reactive.indexing=true
dumont.reactive.parallelism=10

When using QueryBuilder discovery, parallelism is controlled separately via dumont.aem.querybuilder.parallelism (default 10). See Content Discovery Strategies above.

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Customizing the AEM Connector

Need custom attribute extractors, delta date logic, or content processors? See Extending the AEM Connector for the full extension system, configuration JSON reference, and step-by-step guide.

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Related Pages

Page	Description
AEM Event Listener	Install the OSGi event listener bundle inside AEM for real-time indexing
Extending the AEM Connector	Custom attribute extractors, content processors, and configuration JSON reference
Turing: Integration	General integration management: monitoring, indexing stats, and system information
Turing: AEM Connector	AEM integration overview from the Turing perspective
Turing: Semantic Navigation	Configure the SN Sites that receive indexed content

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