Developing Core Components developing-core-components

When to Use the Core Components? when-to-use-the-core-components

As the Core Components are all-new, and offer multiple benefits, it is recommended for new AEM projects to use them. For existing projects, a migration should be part of a larger project effort, for example a rebranding or overall refactoring.

Therefore, Adobe provides following recommendations:

  • New Projects
    New projects should always attempt to use Core Components. If Core Components cannot be used directly or extended to satisfy project requirements, then create a custom component following the component architecture set forth in core components. Except where not otherwise possible, avoid using the foundation components.
  • Existing Projects
    Recommendation is keep using the foundation components, unless a site or component refactoring is planned.
    As they are very widely used by most existing projects, the foundation components will continue to be supported.
  • New Custom Components
    Assess if an existing Core Component may be customized.
    If not, recommendation is to build a new custom component following the Component Guidelines.
  • Existing Custom Components
    If your components work as expected, then keep them as they are.
    If not, refer to “New Custom Components” above.

How to Succeed with the Core Components how-to-succeed

The Core Components are powerful, flexible, and easy to use and customize. Following a few key guidelines will ensure that your project with the Core Components is a success.

Migrating to the Core Components

Any new project should be implemented with Core Components. However existing projects will usually have extensive implementations of the Foundation Components.

Migrating from Foundation Components from-foundation

A larger effort on an existing project (for example a rebranding or overall refactoring) often offers a chance to migrate to the Core Components. To facilitate this migration, Adobe has provided a number of migration tools to encourage the adoption of the Core Components and the latest AEM technology.

The AEM Modernization Tools allow for the easy conversion of:

  • Static templates to editable templates
  • Design configurations to policies
  • Foundation Components to Core Components
  • Classic UI to Touch-Enabled UI

For further information about the usage of these tools, see their documentation.

NOTE
The AEM Modernize Tools are a community effort and are not supported or warrantied by Adobe.

Migration via Move to AEM as a Cloud Service via-aemaacs

Because AEM as a Cloud Service comes with the latest version of the Core Components automatically, when you move from an on-premises AEM installation, you will need to remove any dependency to the Core Components in your projects pom.xml file.

Your proxy components will still work as they did before because proxies point to the necessary supertype and the supertype path has the version in it. In this way, simply removing the dependency enables the Core Components to work in AEMaaCS just as they did on-premises.

Just like any other AEMaaCS project you will also need to add a dependency to the AEM SDK jar as well. This is not specific to the Core Components, but is required.

<dependency>
   <groupId>com.adobe.aem</groupId>
   <artifactId>aem-sdk-api</artifactId>
</dependency>

See the document AEM Project Structure for more information about AEMaaCS projects.

Core Component Support core-component-support

Core Components are an integral part of AEM and supported as is, under the same terms and conditions as if they were delivered as part of the Quickstart.

Like other AEM product features, the general rule is: Components are first announced to be deprecated, and the earliest removed for the following AEM release. That gives customers at least one release cycle to move to the new version of the component, before dropping its support.

The version of each component clearly states the AEM versions that it supports. When support ceases for a version of AEM, then so does the support of the Core Components for that version of AEM.

For details about the support of component customizations, see the Customizing Core Components page.

Technical Capabilities technical-capabilities

The following table gives an overview of the differences between core components and foundation components.

For details about their authoring capabilities and options to pre-configurable them, refer to the authoring page about them.

Capability
Core Component
Foundation Component
Logic implementation
Java POJOs with Sling Models annotations
JSP code
Markup definition
HTML Template Language (HTL) syntax
JSP code
XSS sanitization
Automated by HTL
Mostly manual
CSS classes naming
Standardized naming convention based on Block Element Modifier (BEM) notation (as of release 2.0.0)
Custom schemes
Dialog definition
Coral 3
Coral 2 + Classic UI
JSON output
Sling Models Exporter with Jackson serialization
Default Sling servlet
Versioning
For the model and the HTL
None
Testing
Unit Tests + Integration Tests
Integration Tests
Delivery
Via public GitHub
Via Quickstart
License
Apache License
Adobe proprietary
Contribution
Via pull request
Not possible
Accessibility
Fully compliant with the WCAG 2.0 AA standard
Only partially compliant with the WCAG 2.0 AA standard

Component List component-list

The following table lists the available Core Components, linking to their API, and indicates which foundation components they replace.

Core Component
Description
Replaced Foundation Component(s)
Page
Responsive page working with template editor
/libs/foundation/components/page /libs/wcm/foundation/components/page
Breadcrumb
Page hierarchy navigation
/libs/foundation/components/breadcrumb
Title
H1-H6 title
/libs/foundation/components/title /libs/wcm/foundation/components/title
Text
Rich text
/libs/foundation/components/text /libs/foundation/components/table /libs/wcm/foundation/components/text
Image
Smart and lazy loading of optimal rendition size
/libs/foundation/components/image /libs/foundation/components/adaptiveimage /libs/foundation/components/logo /libs/foundation/components/mobileimage /libs/foundation/components/mobilelogo /libs/wcm/foundation/components/image
List
List of pages
/libs/foundation/components/list /libs/foundation/components/mobilelist /libs/wcm/foundation/components/list
Social Media Sharing
Facebook and Pinterest sharing widget
-
Form Container
Responsive form paragraph system
/libs/foundation/components/form/start /libs/foundation/components/form/end
Form Text
Text input field
/libs/foundation/components/form/text /libs/foundation/components/form/password
Form Options
Multiple options input field
/libs/foundation/components/form/checkbox /libs/foundation/components/form/radio /libs/foundation/components/form/dropdown
Form Hidden
Hidden input field
/libs/foundation/components/form/hidden
Form Button
Submit or custom button
/libs/foundation/components/form/submit
Navigation
A site navigation component that lists the nested page hierarchy
/libs/foundation/components/topnav /libs/foundation/components/mobiletopnav
Language Navigation
A language and country switcher that lists the global language structure
-
Quick Search
A search component that displays the results as in-place suggestions in a drop-down menu
/libs/foundation/components/search
Teaser
Allows the content author to easily create a teaser to further content using an image, title, or rich text and linking to further content or other actions
-
Tabs
Allows the content author to organize page content within multiple tabs
-
Carousel
Allows the content author to organize content in a rotating carousel of slides
/libs/foundation/components/carousel
Content Fragment
Allows for the display of a content fragment
-
Content Fragment List
Allows for the display a list of content fragments
-
Separator
Separates content on a page
-
Accordion
Organize content panels in a collapsible accordion
-
Container
Organize components within a container
-
Button
Create a button on a page
-
Download
Add a downloadable asset to a page
-
Experience Fragment
Add an experience fragment to a page
/libs/cq/experience-fragments/editor/components/experiencefragment
Embed
Embed an external resource within a page
-
Progress Bar
Provide a visual representation of progress towards a goal
-
PDF Viewer
Presents a PDF document on a page
-

Upgrade of Core Components upgrade-of-core-components

One benefit of versioned components is that it allows to separate the migration to a new AEM version from the migration to new component versions. Also, if new component versions are available, it allows for the individual migration of each component to the new version.

Migrations to a new AEM version won’t impact how the Core Components work, provided that their versions also support the new AEM version that is being migrated to. Customizations made to the Core Components should not be affected either, as long as they don’t use APIs that have been deprecated or removed.

Migrations to new versions of the Core Components won’t impact how the component works either, but new features might be introduced to page authors, which might require some configuration by a template editor, in case the default behavior isn’t desired. Customizations however might need to be adapted, for more details see the Customizing Core Components page.

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