Comparing Stream-Based, Page.listChildren, and Query Builder Methods for Listing AEM Children Pages

Problem Statement:

What is the best way to list all the children in AEM?

Stream-based VS page.listChildren VS Query Builder

Introduction:

AEM Sling Query is a resource traversal tool recommended for content traversal in AEM. Traversal using listChildren(), getChildren(), or the Resource API is preferable to writing JCR Queries as querying can be more costly than traversal. Sling Query is not a replacement for JCR Queries. When traversal involves checking multiple levels down, Sling Query is recommended because it involves lazy evaluation of query results.

JCR queries in AEM development and recommends using them sparingly in production environments due to performance concerns. JCR queries are suitable for end-user searches and structured content retrieval but should not be used for rendering requests such as navigation or content counts.

How can I get all the child pages in AEM using JCR Query?

List<String> queryList = new ArrayList<>();
Map<String, String> map = new HashMap<>();
map.put("path", resource.getPath());
map.put("type", "cq:PageContent");
map.put("p.limit", "-1");

Session session = resolver.adaptTo(Session.class);
Query query = queryBuilder.createQuery(PredicateGroup.create(map), session);
SearchResult result = query.getResult();
ResourceResolver leakingResourceResolverReference = null;
try {
    for (final Hit hit : result.getHits()) {
        if (leakingResourceResolverReference == null) {
            leakingResourceResolverReference = hit.getResource().getResourceResolver();
        }
        queryList.add(hit.getPath());
    }
} catch (RepositoryException e) {
    log.error("Error collecting inherited section search results", e);
} finally {
    if (leakingResourceResolverReference != null) {
        leakingResourceResolverReference.close();
    }
}

But JCR Query consumes more resources

AEM recommends using Page.listchildren because of less complexity

List<String> pageList = new ArrayList<>();
Page page = resource.adaptTo(Page.class);
Iterator<Page> childIterator = page.listChildren(new PageFilter(), true);
StreamSupport.stream(((Iterable<Page>) () -> childIterator).spliterator(), false).forEach( r -> {
    pageList.add(r.getPath());
    }
);

But it sometimes misses some results in the result set and it’s slower compared to Java streams based

How about Java streams?

Java streams can iterate faster and execute faster and consumes very few resources

List<String> streamList = new ArrayList<>();
for (Resource descendant : (Iterable<? extends Resource>) traverse(resource)::iterator) {
    streamList.add(descendant.getPath());
}
private Stream<Resource> traverse(@NotNull Resource resourceRoot) {
    Stream<Resource> children = StreamSupport.stream(resourceRoot.getChildren().spliterator(), false)
            .filter(this::shouldFollow);
    return Stream.concat(
            shouldInclude(resourceRoot) ? Stream.of(resourceRoot) : Stream.empty(),
            children.flatMap(this::traverse)
    );
}

protected boolean shouldFollow(@NotNull Resource resource) {
    return !JcrConstants.JCR_CONTENT.equals(resource.getName());
}

protected boolean shouldInclude(@NotNull Resource resource) {
    return resource.getChild(JcrConstants.JCR_CONTENT) != null;
}

I recently came across this logic while debugging the OOTB sling sitemap generator: https://github.com/apache/sling-org-apache-sling-sitemap

results comparison

Stream-based results took just 3miliseconds compared to page.listChildren or query

Clearing Pending/Stuck/Excess Sling Jobs Safely in AEM

Problem statement:

The AEM instance can slow down due to pending or stuck Sling jobs, and even after restarting the system, the queue may not be cleared due to various reasons. This article suggests ways to safely clear all the Sling jobs. How can clear all the sling jobs safely?

Introduction:

AEM is slowing down and restarting takes a long time because Sling Jobs remain pending or stuck due to various factors:

  1. Shutdown during active job processing
  2. The queue is stuck due to some write operations being blocked (high CPU / Indexing / high memory)
  3. Other process threads are blocked.
  4. Processing corrupt content or corrupt segment store or blob store

After restart also if you visit the following AEM Tools health check URL: http://localhost:4502/libs/granite/operations/content/healthreports/healthreport.html/system/sling/monitoring/mbeans/org/apache/sling/healthcheck/HealthCheck/slingJobs

health check

If your replication agent is broken due to a pending/stuck queue but the connection is working fine without a timeout, then it’s usually recommended to create a new agent and replace the broken publisher with the healthy publisher (which doesn’t have a pending queue) and disable the existing agent. But does this solve the queued jobs? No

Is there a way to check which sling job:

  1. Is broken?
  2. Is active?
  3. Can I clean up succeeded jobs?

Yes you can follow the following article from Adobe and they usually ask you to purge nodes by going into content explorer to delete the recursively URL: https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/kb/AEM-restart-takes-a-long-time-due-to-sling-jobs-AEM.html

Is there any other way I can stop jobs safely? Instead of cleaning up important sling jobs history?

Solution:

AEM OOTB comes with multiple tools in AEM and to access all the tools you need to navigate to the tool section and select the appropriate sections to perform all the operations

For example:

  1. AEM operations
  2. Managing templates
  3. Cloud configurations
  4. ACS Commons tools etc.

Tools are an essential part of AEM and avoid any dependency on Groovy scripts or any add scripts and can be managed or extended at any given time.

Creating a tool from scratch can be time-consuming and require man-hours, but generating a tool using a URL such as https://kiransg.com/2022/11/24/aem-tool-create-generate-tool-from-scratch/ can streamline the process. The generated tool, “Clear Out Excess Sling Jobs,” generate the model class, servlet, and other boilerplate code.

Generated files

Generate a table of all the sling jobs and all the states based on all the registered topics in AEM and provide a search filter to find the sling job.

Use Discover service to get all the Job topics:

TopologyView topology = discoveryService.getTopology();
Set<InstanceDescription> instances = topology.getInstances();
Iterator instanceIt = instances.iterator();
Set<String> enabledTopics = new TreeSet<>();
while (instanceIt.hasNext()) {
	InstanceDescription instance = (InstanceDescription) instanceIt.next();
	enabledTopics = expandCSV(instance.getProperty("org.apache.sling.event.jobs.consumer.topics"));
}

Use Agent manager to get all the agents configured in AEM:

Map<String, Agent> agents = this.agentManager.getAgents();		
Set<String> keys = agents.keySet().stream().map(key -> "com/day/cq/replication/job/"+ key).collect(Collectors.toSet());

Use the Job Manager service to find all the jobs based on type and topic:

Collection<Job> activeJobs = jobManager.findJobs(JobManager.QueryType.ACTIVE, topic, 100, (Map<String, Object>[]) null);

Once the sling model is deployed you would see the dashboard like this with all the jobs based on topics with all the states and actions:

sling Jobs report

Create a servlet which accepts topics to clear the jobs safely you need to use job stop and remove the jobs based on the Job ID as shown below:

Cleaning the job

After removing the job, refreshing the table may show the updated content. However sometimes the queued Jobs count might not change, this can be fixed by restarting the server but it’s not recommended.

The working code is available on GitHub at: https://github.com/kiransg89/aemoperations

AEM Operations

Empowering Content Authors with AI: Using ChatGPT with AEM for Enhanced Assistance

Problem Statement:

In traditional content creation processes, authors may encounter challenges and obstacles that prevent them from creating high-quality content in a timely and efficient manner. These challenges can range from writer’s block to technical difficulties with the content management system. To address these challenges, there is a need for a solution that can provide real-time, contextual assistance to authors during the content creation process.

How can ChatGPT be effectively integrated with AEM to provide real-time, contextual assistance to content authors, and how can the adoption of this solution be encouraged among users to maximize its benefits?

Introduction:

ChatGPT is a large language model trained by OpenAI based on the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) architecture. I was designed to generate human-like responses to a wide range of natural language inputs. Essentially, I’m an AI chatbot that can converse with you on a variety of topics, from general knowledge questions to personal advice.

To address challenges, there is a need for a solution that can provide real-time, contextual assistance to authors during the content creation process. One potential solution is to integrate ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot, with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), a leading content management system. By leveraging ChatGPT’s natural language processing capabilities, authors can receive instant and personalized guidance, support, and feedback throughout the content creation process, leading to higher-quality content creation and greater efficiency. However, the effectiveness of this approach will depend on how well the ChatGPT is trained, integrated, and adopted by the users.

How can I use ChatGPT for the teaser component to summarize a large content like title and description and link it article page?

You can get ChatGPT API key by visiting https://platform.openai.com/overview and going to your profile to create a new API key for your application

GPT Api key

In order to use ChatGPT with AEM please create HttpClientFactory and OSGI config to configure endpoints and API key.

Client Factory
OSGi config for Chat GPT endpoint

Create an API invoker Service to prepare the request as shown below:

API invoker class

Create a Summary bean for preparing JSON body text:

Bean class

Create Teaser Servlet as shown below to read page title and description and generate Chat GPT summary by calling API invoker as shown below:

Servlet class

Create a gptTeaser component and override the editor JS to make a request to Teaser Servlet

Teaser dialog editor

Open the GPT Teaser component and link to the page once you visit the Text tab you will be seeing a checkbox to get the title and description from Chat GPT and maximum tokens for summarization.

You can also uncheck the checkbox to edit the summarized content.

Linked page content with long title and description:

page content

Please visit the link to get the full code from GitHub: https://github.com/kiransg89/chatgpt

Optimize author experience and author performance in AEM

Problem statement:

How to improve the authoring experience in AEM using SDI?

Can I optimize page load time?

Can I cache all experience fragments on the pages in AEM?

Introduction:

The purpose of the module presented here is to replace dynamically generated components (eg. current time or foreign exchange rates) with server-side include tags (eg. SSI or ESI). Therefore, the dispatcher is able to cache the whole page but dynamic components are generated and included with every request. Components to include are chosen in filter configuration using resourceType attribute.

When the filter intercepts a request for a component with a given resourceType, it’ll return a server-side include tag (eg. <!–#include virtual=”/path/to/resource” –> for the Apache server). However, the path is extended by a new selector (XF by default). This is required because the filter has to know when to return actual content.

Before going through this article please visit my other blog on Cache Experience Fragments in AEM Using Sling Dynamic Include all the simple customization to cache call the experience fragments on the page to improve page load time on published pages.

Flow diagram on the approach:

As part of this implementation, we are trying to cache all the experience fragments at different paths like /mnt/var/www/author/content/experience-fragment/{site-structure} as shown below:

Flow diagram author SDI approach

If SDI is enabled on the author:

  • On the local author instance all the experience fragments might disappear if the author instance is accessed on the local dispatcher or any lower environments as shown below:
wknd header is missing
  • After accessing the page on the dispatcher attached to the author the experience fragment might be broken and it would allow the components on the experience fragment can be authored directly from the page (kind of new feature) but it would break if any permissions of authoring on header/footer etc.
wknd header is editable on the page

Override the wrapper component:

If it is a Layout container, then please override the responsivegrid.html by copying responsivegrid.html from wcm/foundation/components/responsivegrid the as shown below:

<sly data-sly-test="${wcmmode.edit}" data-sly-use.allowed="com.day.cq.wcm.foundation.model.AllowedComponents"></sly>
<div data-sly-use.api="com.day.cq.wcm.foundation.model.responsivegrid.ResponsiveGrid" class="${api.cssClass} ${allowed.cssClass}">
    <sly data-sly-test.isAllowedApplicable="${allowed.isApplicable}"
         data-sly-test="${isAllowedApplicable}"
         data-sly-use.allowedTemplate="/libs/wcm/foundation/components/parsys/allowedcomponents/allowedcomponents-tpl.html"
         data-sly-call="${allowedTemplate.allowedcomponents @ title=allowed.title, resourcesMap=allowed.resourcesMap,
            placeholderCss=allowed.placeholderCssClass,
            placeholderType=allowed.placeholderResourceType}"></sly>
    <sly data-sly-test="${!isAllowedApplicable}"
         data-sly-repeat.child="${api.paragraphs}"
         data-sly-resource="${child.resource @ decoration='true', cssClassName=child.cssClass, wcmmode='disabled'}"></sly>
    <sly data-sly-test="${!isAllowedApplicable && !wcmmode.disabled}"
         data-sly-resource="${resource.path @ resourceType='wcm/foundation/components/responsivegrid/new', appendPath='/*', decorationTagName='div', cssClassName='new section aem-Grid-newComponent'}"/>
</div>
responsivegrid override

If it is a Core Container component please override the responsivegrid.html and allowedcomponents.html by copying responsivegrid.html and allowedcomponents.html from core/wcm/components/container and the as shown below:

<template data-sly-template.responsiveGrid="${ @ container}">
    <div id="${container.id}"
         class="cmp-container"
         aria-label="${container.accessibilityLabel}"
         role="${container.roleAttribute}"
         style="${container.backgroundStyle @ context='styleString'}">
        <sly data-sly-resource="${resource @ resourceType='wcm/foundation/components/responsivegrid', wcmmode='disabled'}"></sly>
    </div>
</template>
<template data-sly-template.allowedcomponents="${@ title, components}">
    <div data-text="${title}"
         class="aem-AllowedComponent--title"></div>
    <sly data-sly-repeat.comp="${components}"
         data-sly-resource="${comp.path @ resourceType=comp.resourceType, decorationTagName='div', cssClassName=comp.cssClass, wcmmode='disabled'}"></sly>
</template>
Container responsivegrid override
Container allowedcomponent override

With the above fix, the experience fragment component won’t break and won’t be authorable on the page and works as expected.

wknd page working

What about the experience fragment page? It’s not authorable, because of the wcmmode=’disabled’ parameter in sightly

unable to edit component

To fix the above issue Create a sling model as shown below:

This model class replaces the wrapper component with Synthetic Resource pointing to the layout container or core container component, which will avoid SDI picking based on the resourcetype

package com.adobe.aem.guides.wknd.core.models;

import com.adobe.granite.ui.components.ds.ValueMapResource;
import org.apache.sling.api.SlingHttpServletRequest;
import org.apache.sling.api.resource.Resource;
import org.apache.sling.api.resource.ResourceResolver;
import org.apache.sling.api.resource.ValueMap;
import org.apache.sling.api.wrappers.ValueMapDecorator;
import org.apache.sling.models.annotations.DefaultInjectionStrategy;
import org.apache.sling.models.annotations.Model;
import org.apache.sling.models.annotations.injectorspecific.RequestAttribute;
import org.apache.sling.models.annotations.injectorspecific.SlingObject;
import javax.annotation.PostConstruct;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.List;

@Model(adaptables = SlingHttpServletRequest.class, defaultInjectionStrategy = DefaultInjectionStrategy.OPTIONAL)
public class ExperienceFragmentModel {
    private static final String SDI_COMPONENT_RESOURCETYPE = "wknd/components/sdicontainer";
    private static final String RESPONSIVE_COMPONENT_RESOURCETYPE = "core/wcm/components/container/v1/container";

    @SlingObject
    private ResourceResolver resourceResolver;

    @RequestAttribute
    private List<Resource> structureResources;

    List<Resource> structuredResource = new ArrayList<>();

    @PostConstruct
    private void initModel() {
        if(!structureResources.isEmpty() && structureResources.size() == 1) {
            Resource rootRes = structureResources.get(0);
            if(null != rootRes && rootRes.hasChildren()) {
                Resource responsiveRes = rootRes.getChildren().iterator().next();
                if(responsiveRes.isResourceType(SDI_COMPONENT_RESOURCETYPE)) {
                    structuredResource.add(createSyntheticResource(responsiveRes));
                } else {
                    structuredResource = structureResources;
                }
            } else {
                structuredResource = structureResources;
            }
        } else {
            structuredResource = structureResources;
        }
    }

    public List<Resource> getStructuredResource() {
        return structuredResource;
    }

    private Resource createSyntheticResource(Resource childResource) {
        ValueMap properties = new ValueMapDecorator(new HashMap<>());
        Resource sdiComponentResource = new ValueMapResource(resourceResolver, childResource.getPath(), RESPONSIVE_COMPONENT_RESOURCETYPE, properties);
        return sdiComponentResource;
    }
}

Override body.html by copying the body.html from cq/experience-fragments/components/xfpage of the experience fragment page component and add the following code:

<sly data-sly-use.body="body.js" data-sly-use.templatedContainer="com.day.cq.wcm.foundation.TemplatedContainer"/>
<sly data-sly-test="${!templatedContainer.hasStructureSupport}"
     data-sly-resource="${body.resourcePath @ resourceType='wcm/foundation/components/parsys'}"/>
<div class="container">
    <sly data-sly-test="${templatedContainer.hasStructureSupport}"
         data-sly-use.rootChild="${'com.adobe.aem.guides.wknd.core.models.ExperienceFragmentModel' @structureResources=templatedContainer.structureResources }"
         data-sly-repeat.child="${rootChild.structuredResource}"
         data-sly-resource="${child.path @ resourceType=child.resourceType, decorationTagName='div'}"/>
</div>
<div data-sly-resource="${'cloudservices' @ resourceType='cq/cloudserviceconfigs/components/servicecomponents'}"
     data-sly-unwrap></div>
<sly data-sly-include="footerlibs.html"/>
override body.html

Finally, with the above fix, the experience fragment page is editable, and SDI include statement will disappear on the experience fragment page.

Finally component is editable

To clear the cache you need to add /author/content/{experience-fragment} path to acs commons dispatcher cache clear path

Advantages of caching Experience fragment at common or shared location:

  1. Increases initial page load – response time based on the number of XF on the page
  2. Improves overall page load time
  3. Better debugging SDI functionality – whenever the XF page is updated and published it removes from the cache and on a new page request a new cache is created and used on subsequent requests
  4. Decreases CPU utilization

Cache Experience Fragments in AEM Using Sling Dynamic Include

Problem Statement:

Cache all the experience fragments in AEM under a common or shared location on the dispatcher to load dynamically whenever the XF page is activated.

Improve initial page load performance on subsequent requests on the same or similar pages.

Introduction:

The purpose of the module presented here is to replace dynamically generated components (eg. current time or foreign exchange rates) with server-side include tags (eg. SSI or ESI). Therefore the dispatcher is able to cache the whole page but dynamic components are generated and included with every request. Components to include are chosen in filter configuration using resourceType attribute.

When the filter intercepts a request for a component with a given resourceType, it’ll return a server-side include tag (eg. <!–#include virtual=”/path/to/resource” –> for Apache server). However, the path is extended by a new selector (XF by default). This is required because the filter has to know when to return actual content.

Components don’t have to be modified in order to use this module (or even be aware of its existence). It’s a servlet filter, installed as an OSGi bundle and it can be enabled, disabled, or reconfigured without touching the CQ installation.

Flow diagram on the approach:

As part of this implementation, we are trying to cache all the content paths i.e., /var/www/html/publish/content/{site-structire} and experience fragments at different paths like /var/www/html/publish/content/experience-fragment/{site-structure} as shown below:

SDI flow

Create a wrapper component as shown below:

  1. If Container then create a wrapper container component sling:resourceSupertype = core/wcm/components/container/v1/container
  2. If Layout container then create wrapper responsivegrid component sling:resourceSupertype = wcm/foundation/components/responsivegrid
Wrapper component

Update all the XF pages container/layout container components as shown below:

Update only the first container resourcetype under root node to the newly created wrapper component

Update XF page

Update the XF template as shown below:

Update both initial content and structure content, only the first container resourcetype under the root node to the newly created wrapper component

Update XF template

Sling Dynamic Include:

Configure the Sling dynamic as per the documentation provided here: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/experience-manager-learn/foundation/development/set-up-sling-dynamic-include.html?lang=en

Configure Sling dynamic configuration as shown below:

SDI configration

Add filter to Dispatcher filter:

/0190 { /type "allow" /extension "html" /selectors "xf" /path "/content/experience-fragments/*" }

Add rules to cache XF selector as shown below:

/0013 {
	/glob "*.xf.html*"
	/type "allow"
}                	

Do not add cache deny rule

Once the page is loaded you will be seeing following SDI include message as shown below on the publisher:

SDI message on publisher

SDI loading on dispatcher port 8080

SDI on Dispatcher

You can verify cache folder for results:

Cached SDI

If SDI includes path appends resourcetype, then clone the SDI repo and update the code as shown below:

SDI issue

Open the IncludeTagFilter.java as shown below and update the code at synthetic variable to false:

SDI code fix

Run mvn clean install to generate the new jar file and install directly on the publish server or include the external jar dependency on maven

Advantages of caching Experience fragment at common or shared location:

  1. Increases initial page load – response time based on the number of XF on the page
  2. Decreases the Dispatcher cache size – based on the number of XF components on the page
  3. Improves overall page load time
  4. Better debugging SDI functionality – whenever the XF page is updated and published it removes from the cache and on a new page request a new cache is created and used on subsequent requests
  5. Decreases CPU utilization

Credits: I was able to finish this blog with help of my friend

Naveen Kumar Chira

Delete Unreferenced Assets AEM

Problem Statement:

Delete all the assets which don’t have references to improve AEM performance in turn Indexes and search/query performance.

Introduction:

How do assets get published?

  1. The author uploads the images and publishes the assets
  2. Create a launcher and workflow which processes assets metadata and publishes the pages
  3. Whenever we publish any pages and if the page has references to assets, then during publishing, it asks to replicate the references as well.

What happens when the page is unpublished?

  1. When the page is deactivated, assets referenced to the page will not be deactivated because this asset might have reference to the other pages hence out of the box assets won’t be deactivated.
  2. If we perform cleanup, deactivate and delete old pages, we might not be cleaning up assets related to this page.

What advantages of cleaning up of old assets?

  1. Drastically reduces repository size
  2. Improves DAM Asset search
  3. Improves indexing

Generate Published Asset Report by visiting:

Go to Tools -> Assets -> Reports as shown below:

Asset Report Tool Section

Click on create and click on Publish report

Asset Publish Report

Provide folder path and start date and end date

Asset Report Configure Page

Select the columns as per the requirement

Asset Report Custom Column Page

Finally, the report will be ready with all the assets lists as shown below

Asset Report

Download the report to see the final list of images

DAM Report result

To generate the report let’s create a new AEM tool:

AEM OOTB comes with multiple tools in AEM and to access all the tools you need to navigate to the tool section and select the appropriate sections to perform all the operations

For example:
  1. AEM operations
  2. Managing templates
  3. Cloud configurations
  4. ACS Commons tools etc..

Tools are an essential part of AEM and avoid any dependency on Groovy scripts or any add scripts and can be managed or extended at any given point in time.

Broken Asset Report generates a report of all the unreferenced assets by running a Reference Search query across the repository every 30s (by default), you can update the scheduler expression based on your repository size.

The scheduler also checks for the CPU/HEAP size before triggering the reference search process and for more details on Throttled scheduler please refer to the link.

In order to create a perfect content backup package please use the Tool generator to give your tool name and descriptions: https://kiransg.com/2022/11/24/aem-tool-create-generate-tool-from-scratch

Please refer to my GitHub repository for working code on Broken Asset Reference:

Once the repository is built and deployed, you will be able to access the Broken Asset Reference report as shown below:

Broken Asset Reference Tool Section

You can select the report just now created by you in the drop down as shown below:

Select the Asset Report from dropdown

Provide scheduler expression as per your needs and select the result refresh interval for every 10s or as per your needs

You can see the results as shown below once the process is kicked off and it will also show the current row its processing and also CPU/Heap usage.

Reference Search Running status

For some reason, if your system CPU/Heap is throttling then from the backend it takes care of not running your scheduler or you can also manually unschedule the scheduler.

Once your system’s CPU comes back to normal you can go back and select the report and schedule again and report generation picks from the current row where it was left off.

Once the processing is complete click on the report name to download the generated report.

Reference Search Completed Status
Report Excel with Has reference Column

Cross verification:

  1. You can rerun the generated report on the MCP broken asset reference.
  2. Generate the Splunk (logs) results by running a query to get all the assets to call (/content/dam) requests on dispatcher/publisher from the past 1year or so.
  3. You can also reach out to the Analytics team, requesting image impressions (data on image usage) from the past 1 year or so.

Please provide your valuable feedback in the comments.

AEM Performance Optimization CPU/HEAP Status

Problem Statement:

As a developer or user, I would like to make an informed decision by fetching the AEM system CPU/Heap status before or while running a process.

Introduction:

Use cases for developers:

  1. Infinite loops – a coding error
  2. Garbage collection is not handled – unclosed streams
  3. An exception like out of bound issue
  4. Heap size issue – saving loads of data or declaring/manipulating too many strings

Java MX Bean is an API that provides detailed information on JVM CPU/MEM (Heap) status.

A platform MXBean is a managed bean that conforms to the JMX Instrumentation Specification and only uses a set of basic data types. A JMX management application and the platform MBeanServer can interoperate without requiring classes for MXBean specific data types. The data types being transmitted between the JMX connector server and the connector client are open types and this allows interoperation across versions. See the specification of MXBeans for details.

Each platform MXBean is a PlatformManagedObject and it has a unique ObjectName for registration in the platform MBeanServer as returned by the getObjectName method.

As developer before running or while running any bulk process or schedulers, it’s always better to get system information.

ThrottledTaskRunnerStats Service:

Create ThrottledTaskRunnerStats service as shown below:

package com.aem.operations.core.services;

import javax.management.InstanceNotFoundException;
import javax.management.ReflectionException;

/**
 * Private interface for exposing ThrottledTaskRunner stats
 * **/
public interface ThrottledTaskRunnerStats {
    /**
     * @return the % of CPU being utilized.
     * @throws InstanceNotFoundException
     * @throws ReflectionException
     */
    double getCpuLevel() throws InstanceNotFoundException, ReflectionException;

    /**
     * The % of memory being utilized.
     * @return
     */
    double getMemoryUsage();

    /***
     * @return the OSGi configured max allowed CPU utilization.
     */
    double getMaxCpu();

    /***
     * @return the OSGi configured max allowed Memory (heap) utilization.
     */
    double getMaxHeap();

    /**
     * @return the max number of threads ThrottledTaskRunner will use to execute the work.
     */
    int getMaxThreads();
}

ThrottledTaskRunnerImpl Service Implementation:

Create ThrottledTaskRunnerImpl service implementation as shown below:

package com.aem.operations.core.services.impl;

import java.lang.management.ManagementFactory;
import javax.management.Attribute;
import javax.management.AttributeList;
import javax.management.AttributeNotFoundException;
import javax.management.InstanceNotFoundException;
import javax.management.MBeanException;
import javax.management.MBeanServer;
import javax.management.MalformedObjectNameException;
import javax.management.ObjectName;
import javax.management.ReflectionException;
import javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData;
import com.aem.operations.core.services.ThrottledTaskRunnerStats;
import org.osgi.service.component.annotations.Activate;
import org.osgi.service.component.annotations.Component;
import org.osgi.service.component.annotations.Modified;
import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;

@Component(service = ThrottledTaskRunnerStats.class, immediate = true, name = "Throttled Task Runner Service Stats")
public class ThrottledTaskRunnerImpl implements ThrottledTaskRunnerStats {

    private static final Logger LOGGER = LoggerFactory.getLogger(ThrottledTaskRunnerImpl.class);
    private final MBeanServer mbs = ManagementFactory.getPlatformMBeanServer();
    private ObjectName osBeanName;
    private ObjectName memBeanName;

    @Activate
    @Modified
    protected void activate() {
        try {
            memBeanName = ObjectName.getInstance("java.lang:type=Memory");
            osBeanName = ObjectName.getInstance("java.lang:type=OperatingSystem");
        } catch (MalformedObjectNameException | NullPointerException ex) {
            LOGGER.error("Error getting OS MBean (shouldn't ever happen) {}", ex.getMessage());
        }
    }

    @Override
    public double getCpuLevel() throws InstanceNotFoundException, ReflectionException {
        // This method will block until CPU usage is low enough
        AttributeList list = mbs.getAttributes(osBeanName, new String[]{"ProcessCpuLoad"});

        if (list.isEmpty()) {
            LOGGER.error("No CPU stats found for ProcessCpuLoad");
            return -1;
        }

        Attribute att = (Attribute) list.get(0);
        return (Double) att.getValue();
    }

    @Override
    public double getMemoryUsage() {
        try {
            Object memoryusage = mbs.getAttribute(memBeanName, "HeapMemoryUsage");
            CompositeData cd = (CompositeData) memoryusage;
            long max = (Long) cd.get("max");
            long used = (Long) cd.get("used");
            return (double) used / (double) max;
        } catch (AttributeNotFoundException | InstanceNotFoundException | MBeanException | ReflectionException e) {
            LOGGER.error("No Memory stats found for HeapMemoryUsage", e);
            return -1;
        }
    }

    @Override
    public double getMaxCpu() {
        return 0.75;
    }

    @Override
    public double getMaxHeap() {
        return 0.85;
    }

    @Override
    public int getMaxThreads() {
        return Math.max(1, Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors()/2);
    }
}

CPU Status Servlet:

Create a CpuStatusServlet based on the path as shown below: 

package com.aem.operations.core.servlets;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import java.text.MessageFormat;
import javax.management.InstanceNotFoundException;
import javax.management.ReflectionException;
import javax.servlet.Servlet;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import com.aem.operations.core.services.ThrottledTaskRunnerStats;
import org.apache.sling.api.SlingHttpServletRequest;
import org.apache.sling.api.SlingHttpServletResponse;
import org.apache.sling.api.servlets.SlingAllMethodsServlet;
import org.osgi.service.component.annotations.Component;
import org.osgi.service.component.annotations.Reference;
import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
import com.google.gson.Gson;
import com.google.gson.JsonObject;

@Component(service = { Servlet.class }, property = { "sling.servlet.paths=" + CpuStatusServlet.RESOURCE_PATH,
        "sling.servlet.methods=POST" })
public class CpuStatusServlet extends SlingAllMethodsServlet{

    private static final Logger LOGGER = LoggerFactory.getLogger(CpuStatusServlet.class);

    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    public static final String RESOURCE_PATH = "/bin/cpustatust";
    private static final String MESSAGE_FORMAT = "{0,number,#%}";

    @Reference
    private transient ThrottledTaskRunnerStats ttrs;

    @Override
    protected void doGet(SlingHttpServletRequest request, SlingHttpServletResponse response)
            throws ServletException, IOException {
        JsonObject jsonResponse = getSystemStats();
        try (PrintWriter out = response.getWriter()) {
            out.print(new Gson().toJson(jsonResponse));
        }
    }

    private JsonObject getSystemStats() {
        JsonObject json = new JsonObject();
        try {
            json.addProperty("cpu", MessageFormat.format(MESSAGE_FORMAT, ttrs.getCpuLevel()));
        } catch (InstanceNotFoundException | ReflectionException e) {
            LOGGER.error("Could not collect CPU stats {}", e.getMessage());
            json.addProperty("cpu", -1);
        }
        json.addProperty("mem", MessageFormat.format(MESSAGE_FORMAT, ttrs.getMemoryUsage()));
        json.addProperty("maxCpu", MessageFormat.format(MESSAGE_FORMAT, ttrs.getMaxCpu()));
        json.addProperty("maxMem", MessageFormat.format(MESSAGE_FORMAT, ttrs.getMaxHeap()));
        return json;
    }
}

Frontend:

Make a request to a servlet from frontend using AJAX call as shown below:

function getStatus(showStatus) {
   $.ajax({
      // add the servlet path
      url: "/bin/cpustatust",
      method: "GET",
      async: true,
      cache: false,
      contentType: false,
      processData: false
   }).done(function (data) {
      if (data) {
         data = JSON.parse(data);
         $("#table-body").append(`<tr>
						<td>${data.cpu}/${data.maxCpu}</td>
			            <td>${data.mem}/${data.maxMem}</td>
		           		 </tr>`);
      } else {
         $(".modal").hide();
         showStatus = false;
         ui.notify("Error", "Unable to get the status", "error");
      }
   }).fail(function (data) {
      $(".modal").hide();
      showStatus = false;
      if (data && data.responseJSON && data.responseJSON.message) {
         ui.notify("Error", data.responseJSON.message, "error");
      } else {
         //add error message
         ui.notify("Error", "Unable to get the status", "error");
      }
   });
   if (showStatus) {
      setTimeout(() => {
         emptyResults();
         getStatus(true);
      }, 2000);
   }
}
function emptyResults() {
   $("#table-body").empty();
}
<table id="table-data">
   <thead id="table-head">
   <tr>
      <th>CPU Usage</th>
      <th>Memory (Heap) Usage</th>
   </tr>
   </thead>
   <tbody id="table-body">
   </tbody>
</table>

The output of the status:

CPU Memory status result

For more information on Throttled Task runner-based performance optimization please visit:

  1. AEM Performance Optimization Scheduler
  2. AEM Performance Optimization Workflow
  3. AEM Performance Optimization Replication

AEM Performance Optimization Activation/Replication

Problem Statement:

AEM Bulk Replication allows you to activate a series of pages and/or assets.

How can we make sure workflow won’t impact AEM performance (CPU or Heap memory) / throttle the system?

Introduction:

AEM bulk replication or activation is performed on a series of pages and/or assets. We usually perform bulk replication on tree structures or lists of paths.

Use case:

  1. MSM (Multi-site management) – rolling out a series of pages or site
  2. Editable template – add/remove new components on template structure and activate existing pages
  3. Bulk Asset ingests into the system
  4. Bulk redirect//vanity path update

ACS Commons Throttled Task Runner is built on Java management API for managing and monitoring the Java VM and can be used to pause tasks and terminate the tasks based on stats.

Throttled Task Runner (a managed thread pool) provides a convenient way to run many AEM-specific activities in bulk it basically checks for the Throttled Task Runner bean and gets current running stats of the actual work being done.

OSGi Configuration:

The Throttled Task Runner is OSGi configurable, but please note that changing configuration while work is being processed results in resetting the worker pool and can lose active work.

Throttled Task Runner OSGi

Max threads: Recommended not to exceed the number of CPU cores. Default 4.

Max CPU %: Used to throttle activity when CPU exceeds this amount. Range is 0..1; -1 means disable this check.

Max Heap %: Used to throttle activity when heap usage exceeds this amount. Range is 0..1; -1 means disable this check.

Cooldown time: Time to wait for CPU/MEM cooldown between throttle checks (in milliseconds)

Watchdog time: Maximum time allowed (in ms) per action before it is interrupted forcefully.

JMX MBeans

Throttled Task Runner MBean

This is the core worker pool. All action managers share the same task runner pool, at least in the current implementation. The task runner can be paused or halted entirely, throwing out any unfinished work.

Throttled task runner JMX
Throttled task runner JMX

How to use ACS Commons throttled task runner

Add the following dependency to your pom

Create a custom service or servlet as shown below:

Throttled Replication

inside the custom workflow process method check for the Low CPU and Low memory before starting your task to avoid performance impact on the system.

For bulk replication (publish/unpublish/delete) assets or pages, please refer to the AEM Operation Replication Tool

For best practices on the AEM servlet please refer to the link.

AEM Performance Optimization Workflow

Problem Statement:

AEM Workflows allow you to automate a series of steps that are performed on (one or more) pages and/or assets.

How can we make sure workflow won’t impact AEM performance (CPU or Heap memory) / throttle the system?

Introduction:

AEM Workflows allow you to automate a series of steps that are performed on (one or more) pages and/or assets.

For example, when publishing, an editor has to review the content – before a site administrator activates the page. A workflow that automates this example notifies each participant when it is time to perform their required work:

  1. The author applies the workflow to the page.
  2. The editor receives a work item that indicates that they are required to review the page content. When finished, they indicate that their work item is complete.
  3. The site administrator then receives a work item that requests the activation of the page. When finished, they indicate that their work item is complete.

Typically:

  • Content authors apply workflows to pages as well as participate in workflows.
  • The workflows that you use are specific to the business processes of your organization.

ACS Commons Throttled Task Runner is built on Java management API for managing and monitoring the Java VM and can be used to pause tasks and terminate the tasks based on stats.

Throttled Task Runner (a managed thread pool) provides a convenient way to run many AEM-specific activities in bulk it basically checks for the Throttled Task Runner bean and gets current running stats of the actual work being done.

OSGi Configuration:

The Throttled Task Runner is OSGi configurable, but please note that changing configuration while work is being processed results in resetting the worker pool and can lose active work.

Throttled task runner OSGi

Max threads: Recommended not to exceed the number of CPU cores. Default 4.

Max CPU %: Used to throttle activity when CPU exceeds this amount. Range is 0..1; -1 means disable this check.

Max Heap %: Used to throttle activity when heap usage exceeds this amount. Range is 0..1; -1 means disable this check.

Cooldown time: Time to wait for CPU/MEM cooldown between throttle checks (in milliseconds)

Watchdog time: Maximum time allowed (in ms) per action before it is interrupted forcefully.

JMX MBeans

Throttled Task Runner MBean

This is the core worker pool. All action managers share the same task runner pool, at least in the current implementation. The task runner can be paused or halted entirely, throwing out any unfinished work.

Throttled task runner JMX
Throttled task runner JMX

How to use ACS Commons throttled task runner

Add the following dependency to your pom

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.adobe.acs</groupId>
    <artifactId>acs-aem-commons-bundle</artifactId>
    <version>5.0.4</version>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

Create a custom workflow and call the service as shown below:

Throttled Workflow

inside the custom workflow process method check for the Low CPU and Low memory before starting your task to avoid performance impact on the system.

For all the bulk workflow executions on pages/assets, it’s recommended to use ACS commons bulk workflow.

For best practices on workflow please refer to the link

AEM Performance Optimization Scheduler

Problem Statement:

AEM Schedulers are commonly used to run bulk tasks at an off time (nonbusiness hours) and some tasks are run periodically to fetch results cached and fetched by the front end.

How can we make sure bulk tasks won’t impact AEM performance (CPU or Heap memory) / throttle the system?

Introduction:

In Computer Software, Scheduling is a paradigm of planning for the execution of a task at a certain point in time and it can be broadly classified into two types:

1. Scheduled Task – executing once at a particular future point in time

2. Frequent scheduling – repeat periodically at a fixed interval

The use case for the scheduler:

1. Sitemap generation

2. Synching product data from AEM Commerce

3. Fetch DB content and place it in the repository to be picked up by frontend and in turn cached in Dispatcher

4. Fetch Stats or reports and place them in the repository to be picked up by frontend and in turn cached in Dispatcher

ACS Commons Throttled Task Runner is built on Java management API for managing and monitoring the Java VM and can be used to pause tasks and terminate the tasks based on stats.

Throttled Task Runner (a managed thread pool) provides a convenient way to run many AEM-specific activities in bulk it basically checks for the Throttled Task Runner bean and gets current running stats of the actual work being done.

OSGi Configuration:

The Throttled Task Runner is OSGi configurable, but please note that changing configuration while work is being processed results in resetting the worker pool and can lose active work.

Throttled task runner OSGi

Max threads: Recommended not to exceed the number of CPU cores. Default 4.

Max CPU %: Used to throttle activity when CPU exceeds this amount. Range is 0..1; -1 means disable this check.

Max Heap %: Used to throttle activity when heap usage exceeds this amount. Range is 0..1; -1 means disable this check.

Cooldown time: Time to wait for CPU/MEM cooldown between throttle checks (in milliseconds)

Watchdog time: Maximum time allowed (in ms) per action before it is interrupted forcefully.

JMX MBeans

Throttled Task Runner MBean

This is the core worker pool. All action managers share the same task runner pool, at least in the current implementation. The task runner can be paused or halted entirely, throwing out any unfinished work.

Throttled task runner JMX

How to use ACS Commons throttled task runner

Add the following dependency to your pom

<dependency>
     <groupId>com.adobe.acs</groupId>
     <artifactId>acs-aem-commons-bundle</artifactId>
     <version>5.0.4</version>
     <scope>provided</scope>
 </dependency>

Create a scheduler and call the service as shown below:

Throttled Scheduler call

inside the run, method check for the Low CPU and Low memory before starting your task to avoid performance impact on the system

For the best practices on AEM Scheduler please refer to the link