AEM GraphQL API for use with Content Fragments graphql-api-for-use-with-content-fragments

Learn how to use Content Fragments in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) with the AEM GraphQL API for headless content delivery.

AEM GraphQL API used with Content Fragments is heavily based on the standard, open-source GraphQL API.

Using the GraphQL API in AEM enables the efficient delivery of Content Fragments to JavaScript clients in headless CMS implementations:

  • Avoiding iterative API requests as with REST,
  • Ensuring that delivery is limited to the specific requirements,
  • Allowing for bulk delivery of exactly what is needed for rendering as the response to a single API query.
NOTE
GraphQL is used in two (separate) scenarios in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM):

Prerequisites prerequisites

Customers using GraphQL should install the AEM Content Fragment with GraphQL Index Package 1.0.5. See the Release Notes for further details.

The GraphQL API graphql-api

GraphQL is:

  • …a query language for APIs and a runtime for fulfilling those queries with your existing data. GraphQL provides a complete and understandable description of the data in your API. It gives clients the power to ask for exactly what they need and nothing more, makes it easier to evolve APIs over time, and enables powerful developer tools.”.

    See GraphQL.org

  • …an open spec for a flexible API layer. Put GraphQL over your existing backends so you can build products faster than ever before…”.

    See Explore GraphQL.

  • “…a data query language and specification developed internally by Facebook in 2012 before being publicly open-sourced in 2015. It provides an alternative to REST-based architectures with the purpose of increasing developer productivity and minimizing amounts of data transferred. GraphQL is used in production by hundreds of organizations of all sizes…”

    See GraphQL Foundation.

For further information about the GraphQL API, see the following sections (among many other resources):

The GraphQL for AEM implementation is based on the standard GraphQL Java™ Library. See:

GraphQL Terminology graphql-terminology

GraphQL uses the following:

See the (GraphQL.org) Introduction to GraphQL for comprehensive details, including the Best Practices.

GraphQL Query Types graphql-query-types

With GraphQL you can perform queries to return either:

AEM provides capabilities to convert queries (both types) to Persisted Queries that are cached by Dispatcher and the CDN.

GraphQL Query Best Practices (Dispatcher and CDN) graphql-query-best-practices

Persisted queries are the recommended method to be used on publish instances as:

  • they are cached
  • they are managed centrally by AEM
NOTE
Usually there is no dispatcher/CDN on author, so there is no performance gain in using persisted queries there; apart from testing them.

GraphQL queries using POST requests are not recommended as they are not cached, so on a default instance the Dispatcher is configured to block such queries.

While GraphQL also supports GET requests, these requests can hit limits (for example, the length of the URL) that can be avoided using persisted queries.

See Enable caching of persisted queries for further details.

NOTE
The ability to perform direct queries may be deprecated at some point in the future.

GraphiQL Interface graphiql-interface

An implementation of the standard GraphiQL interface is available for use with AEM GraphQL.

NOTE
GraphiQL is included in all environments of AEM (but is only accessible/visible when you configure your endpoints).
In previous releases, you needed a package to install the GraphiQL IDE. If you have this package installed, it can now be removed.

This interface lets you directly input, and test, queries.

For example:

  • http://localhost:4502/content/graphiql.html

It provides features such as syntax-highlighting, auto-complete, auto-suggest, together with a history and online documentation:

GraphiQL Interface

Use Cases for Author and Publish Environments use-cases-author-publish-environments

The use cases can depend on the type of AEM environment:

  • Publish environment; used to:

    • Query data for JS application (standard use-case)
  • Author environment; used to:

    • Query data for “content management purposes”:

      • GraphQL in AEM is a read-only API.
      • The REST API can be used for CR(u)D operations.

Permissions permission

The permissions are required for accessing Assets.

GraphQL queries are run with the permission of the AEM user of the underlying request. If the user does not have read access to some fragments (stored as Assets), they do not become part of the result set.

Also, the user must have access to a GraphQL endpoint to be able to run GraphQL queries.

Schema Generation schema-generation

GraphQL is a typed API, which means that data must be clearly structured and organized by type.

The GraphQL specification provides a series of guidelines on how to create a robust API for interrogating data on a certain instance. To complete these guidelines, a client must fetch the Schema, which contains all the types necessary for a query.

For Content Fragments, the GraphQL schemas (structure and types) are based on Enabled Content Fragment Models and their data types.

CAUTION
All the GraphQL schemas (derived from Content Fragment Models that have been Enabled) are readable through the GraphQL endpoint.
This ability means that you must ensure that no sensitive data is available, as it could be leaked this way. For example, it includes information that could be present as field names in the model definition.

For example, if a user created a Content Fragment Model called Article, then AEM generates a GraphQL type ArticleModel. The fields within this type correspond to the fields and data types defined in the model. In addition, it creates some entrypoints for the queries that operate on this type, such as articleByPath or articleList.

  1. A Content Fragment Model:

    Content Fragment Model for use with GraphQL

  2. The corresponding GraphQL schema (output from GraphiQL automatic documentation):
    GraphQL Schema based on Content Fragment Model

    This image shows that the generated type ArticleModel contains several fields.

    • Three of them have been controlled by the user: author, main, and referencearticle.

    • The other fields were added automatically by AEM, and represent helpful methods to provide information about a certain Content Fragment. In this example, (the helper fields) _path, _metadata, _variations.

  3. After a user creates a Content Fragment based on the Article model, it can then be interrogated through GraphQL. For examples, see the Sample Queries (based on a sample Content Fragment structure for use with GraphQL).

In GraphQL for AEM, the schema is flexible. This flexibility means that it is auto-generated each time a Content Fragment Model is created, updated, or deleted. The data schema caches are also refreshed when you update a Content Fragment Model.

The Sites GraphQL service listens (in the background) for any modifications made to a Content Fragment Model. When updates are detected, only that part of the schema is regenerated. This optimization saves time and provides stability.

So for example, if you:

  1. Install a package containing Content-Fragment-Model-1 and Content-Fragment-Model-2:

    1. GraphQL types for Model-1 and Model-2 are generated.
  2. Then modify Content-Fragment-Model-2:

    1. Only the Model-2 GraphQL type gets updated.

    2. Whereas Model-1 remains the same.

NOTE
This detail is important to note just in case you want to do bulk updates on Content Fragment Models through the REST api, or otherwise.

The schema is served through the same endpoint as the GraphQL queries, with the client handling the fact that the schema is called with the extension GQLschema. For example, performing a simple GET request on /content/cq:graphql/global/endpoint.GQLschema results in the output of the schema with the Content-type: text/x-graphql-schema;charset=iso-8859-1.

Schema Generation - Unpublished Models schema-generation-unpublished-models

When Content Fragments are nested it can happen that a parent Content Fragment Model is published, but a referenced model is not.

NOTE
The AEM user interface prevents this happening, but if publishing is made programmatically, or with content packages, it can occur.

When such happens, AEM generates an incomplete Schema for the parent Content Fragment Model. It means that the Fragment Reference, which depends on the unpublished model, is removed from the schema.

Fields fields

Within the schema, there are individual fields, of two basic categories:

  • Fields that you generate.

    A selection of Data Types are used to create fields based on how you configure your Content Fragment Model. The field names are taken from the Property Name field of the Data Type.

    • There is also the Render As setting to consider, as users can configure certain data types. For example, a single-line text field can be configured to contain multiple single-line texts by choosing multifield from the dropdown.
  • GraphQL for AEM also generates several helper fields.

    These fields are used to identify a Content Fragment, or to get more information about a content fragment.

Data Types data-types

GraphQL for AEM supports a list of types. All the supported Content Fragment Model Data Types and the corresponding GraphQL types are represented:

Content Fragment Model - Data Type
GraphQL Type
Description
Single-line Text
String, [String]
Used for simple strings such as author names and location names.
Multiline Text
String
Used for outputting text such as the body of an article
Number
Float, [Float]
Used to display floating point number and regular numbers
Boolean
Boolean
Used to display checkboxes → simple true/false statements
Date And Time
Calendar
Used to display date and time in an ISO 8086 format. Depending on the type selected, there are three flavors available for use in AEM GraphQL: onlyDate, onlyTime, dateTime
Enumeration
String
Used to display an option from a list of options defined at model creation
Tags
[String]
Used to display a list of Strings representing Tags used in AEM
Content Reference
String
Used to display the path towards another asset in AEM
Fragment Reference
A model type

Single field: Model - Model type, referenced directly

Multifield, with one referenced type: [Model] - Array of type Model, referenced directly from array

Multifield, with multiple referenced types: [AllFragmentModels] - Array of all model types, referenced from array with union type
Used to reference one, or more, Content Fragments of certain Model Types, defined when the model was created

Helper Fields helper-fields

In addition to the data types for user-generated fields, GraphQL for AEM also generates several helper fields to help identify a Content Fragment, or to provide additional information about a Content Fragment.

These helper fields are marked with a preceding _ to distinguish between what has been defined by the user and what has been auto-generated.

Path path

The path field is used as an identifier in AEM GraphQL. It represents the path of the Content Fragment asset inside the AEM repository. This path is chosen as the identifier of a content fragment, because it:

  • is unique within AEM,
  • can be easily fetched.

The following code displays the paths of all Content Fragments that were created based on the Content Fragment Model Person.

{
  personList {
    items {
      _path
    }
  }
}

To retrieve a single Content Fragment of a specific type, you must also determine its path first. For example:

{
  authorByPath(_path: "/content/dam/path/to/fragment/john-doe") {
    item {
      _path
      firstName
      name
    }
  }
}

See Sample Query - A Single Specific City Fragment.

Metadata metadata

Through GraphQL, AEM also exposes the metadata of a Content Fragment. Metadata is the information that describes a content fragment, such as the following:

  • the title of a content fragment
  • the thumbnail path
  • the description of a Content Fragment
  • and the date it was created, among others.

Because Metadata is generated through the Schema Editor and as such does not have a specific structure, the TypedMetaData GraphQL type was implemented to expose the metadata of a Content Fragment. The TypedMetaData exposes the information grouped by the following scalar types:

Field
stringMetadata:[StringMetadata]!
stringArrayMetadata:[StringArrayMetadata]!
intMetadata:[IntMetadata]!
intArrayMetadata:[IntArrayMetadata]!
floatMetadata:[FloatMetadata]!
floatArrayMetadata:[FloatArrayMetadata]!
booleanMetadata:[BooleanMetadata]!
booleanArrayMetadata:[booleanArrayMetadata]!
calendarMetadata:[CalendarMetadata]!
calendarArrayMetadata:[CalendarArrayMetadata]!

Each scalar type represents either a single name-value pair or an array of name-value pairs, where the value of that pair is of the type it was grouped in.

For example, if you want to retrieve the title of a Content Fragment, this property is a String property, so you would query for all the String Metadata:

To query for metadata:

{
  personByPath(_path: "/content/dam/path/to/fragment/john-doe") {
    item {
      _path
      _metadata {
        stringMetadata {
          name
          value
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

You can view all the metadata GraphQL types if you view the Generated GraphQL schema. All model types have the same TypedMetaData.

NOTE
Difference between normal and array metadata
Keep in mind that StringMetadata and StringArrayMetadata both refer to what is stored in the repository, not how you retrieve them.
For example, by calling the stringMetadata field, you receive an array of all the metadata stored in the repository as a String. And if you call stringArrayMetadata, you receive an array of all the metadata stored in the repository as String[].

See Sample Query for Metadata - List the Metadata for Awards titled GB.

Variations variations

The _variations field has been implemented to simplify querying the variations that a Content Fragment has. For example:

{
  personByPath(_path: "/content/dam/path/to/fragment/john-doe") {
    item {
      _variations
    }
  }
}
NOTE
The _variations field does not contain a master variation, as technically the original data (referenced as Master in the UI) is not considered an explicit variation.

See Sample Query - All Cities with a Named Variation.

NOTE
If the given variation does not exist for a Content Fragment, then the original data (also known as the master variation) is returned as a (fallback) default.

GraphQL Variables graphql-variables

GraphQL permits variables to be placed in the query. For more information, see GraphQL documentation for Variables.

For example, to get all Content Fragments of type Article that have a specific variation, you can specify the variable variation in GraphiQL.

GraphQL Variables

### query
query GetArticlesByVariation($variation: String!) {
    articleList(variation: $variation) {
        items {
            _path
            author
            _variations
        }
    }
}

### in query variables
{
    "variation": "uk"
}

GraphQL Directives graphql-directives

In GraphQL, there is a possibility to change the query based on variables, called GraphQL Directives.

For example, there you can include the adventurePrice field in a query for all the AdventureModels, based on a variable includePrice.

GraphQL Directives

### query
query GetAdventureByType($includePrice: Boolean!) {
  adventureList {
    items {
      adventureTitle
      adventurePrice @include(if: $includePrice)
    }
  }
}

### in query variables
{
    "includePrice": true
}

Filtering filtering

You can also use filtering in your GraphQL queries to return specific data.

Filtering uses a syntax based on logical operators and expressions.

The most atomic part is a single expression that can be applied to the content of a certain field. It compares the content of the field with a given constant value.

For example, the following expression would compare the content of the field with the value some text, and succeed if the content equals the value. Otherwise, the expression fails.:

{
  value: "some text"
  _op: EQUALS
}

The following operators can be used to compare fields to a certain value:

Operator
Types
The expression succeeds if …
EQUALS
String, ID, Boolean
… the value is the same as the content of the field
EQUALS_NOT
String, ID
… the value is not the same as the content of the field
CONTAINS
String
… the content of the field contains the value ({ value: "mas", _op: CONTAINS } matches Christmas, Xmas, master, …)
CONTAINS_NOT
String
… the content of the field does not contain the value
STARTS_WITH
ID
… the ID starts with a certain value ({ value: "/content/dam/", _op: STARTS_WITH matches /content/dam/path/to/fragment, but not /namespace/content/dam/something
EQUAL
Int, Float
… the value is the same as the content of the field
UNEQUAL
Int, Float
… the value is not the same as the content of the field
GREATER
Int, Float
… the content of the field is greater than the value
GREATER_EQUAL
Int, Float
… the content of the field is greater than or equal to the value
LOWER
Int, Float
… the content of the field is lower than the value
LOWER_EQUAL
Int, Float
… the content of the field is lower than or equal to the value
AT
Calendar, Date, Time
… the content of the field is the same as the value (including timezone setting)
NOT_AT
Calendar, Date, Time
… the content of the field is not the same as the value
BEFORE
Calendar, Date, Time
… the point in time denoted by the value is before the point in time denoted by the content of the field
AT_OR_BEFORE
Calendar, Date, Time
… the point in time denoted by the value is before or at the same point in time denoted by the content of the field
AFTER
Calendar, Date, Time
… the point in time denoted by the value is after the point in time denoted by the content of the field
AT_OR_AFTER
Calendar, Date, Time
… the point in time denoted by the value is after or at the same point in time denoted by the content of the field

Some types also let you specify additional options that modify how an expression is evaluated:

Option
Types
Description
_ignoreCase
String
Ignores the case of a string, for example, a value of time matches TIME, time, tImE, …
_sensitiveness
Float
Allows a certain margin for float values to be considered the same (to work around technical limitations due to the internal representation of float values; should be avoided, as this option might have a negative impact on performance

Expressions can be combined to a set with the help of a logical operator (_logOp):

  • OR - the set of expressions succeed if at least one expression succeeds
  • AND - the set of expressions succeed if all expressions succeed (default)

Each field can be filtered by its own set of expressions. The expression sets of all fields mentioned in the filter argument are eventually combined by its own logical operator.

A filter definition (passed as the filter argument to a query) contains:

  • A subdefinition for each field (the field can be accessed through its name, for example, there’s a lastName field in the filter for the lastName field in the Data (field) Type)
  • Each subdefinition contains the _expressions array, providing the expression set, and the _logOp field that defines the logical operator the expressions should be combined with
  • Each expression is defined by the value (value field) and the operator (_operator field) the content of a field should be compared to

You can omit _logOp if you want to combine items with AND and _operator if you want to check for equality, because these values are defaults.

The following example demonstrates a full query that filters all persons that have a lastName of Provo or containing sjö, independent of the case:

{
  authorList(filter: {
    lastname: {
      _logOp: OR
      _expressions: [
        {
          value: "sjö",
          _operator: CONTAINS,
          _ignoreCase: true
        },
        {
          value: "Provo"
        }
      ]
    }
  }) {
    items {
      lastName
      firstName
    }
  }
}

When executing a GraphQL query using optional variables, if a specific value is not provided for the optional variable, then the variable will be ignored in the filter evaluation. This means, query results will contain all values, both null and not null, for the property related to the filter variable.

NOTE
If a null value is explicitly specified for such a variable, then the filter will match only null values for the corresponding property.

For example, in the query below, where no value is specified for the property lastName:

query getAuthorsFilteredByLastName($authorLastName: String) {
  authorList(filter:
    {
      lastName: {_expressions: {value: $authorLastName}
      }}) {
    items {
      lastName
    }
  }
}

All authors will be returned:

{
  "data": {
    "authorList": {
      "items": [
        {
          "lastName": "Hammer"
        },
        {
          "lastName": "Provo"
        },
        {
          "lastName": "Wester"
        },
        {
          "lastName": null
        },
         ...
      ]
    }
  }
}

While you can also filter on nested fields, it is not recommended, as it might lead to performance issues.

For further examples, see:

Sorting sorting

This feature lets you sort the query results according to a specified field.

The sorting criteria:

  • is a comma-separated list of values representing the field path

    • the first field in the list defines the primary sort order

      • the second field is used if two values of the primary sort criterion are equal
      • the third field is used if the first two criteria are equal, and so on.
    • dotted notation, that is, field1.subfield.subfield, and so on.

  • with an optional order direction

    • ASC (ascending) or DESC (descending); as default ASC is applied
    • the direction can be specified per field; this ability means that you can sort one field in ascending order, another one in descending order (name, firstName DESC)

For example:

query {
  authorList(sort: "lastName, firstName") {
    items {
      firstName
      lastName
    }
  }
}

And also:

{
  authorList(sort: "lastName DESC, firstName DESC") {
    items {
        lastName
        firstName
    }
  }
}

You can also sort on a field within a nested fragment, using the format of nestedFragmentname.fieldname.

NOTE
This format might have a negative impact on performance.

For example:

query {
  articleList(sort: "authorFragment.lastName")  {
    items {
      title
      authorFragment {
        firstName
        lastName
        birthDay
      }
      slug
    }
  }
}

Paging paging

This feature lets you perform paging on query types that returns a list. Two methods are provided:

  • offset and limit in a List query
  • first and after in a Paginated query

List query - offset and limit list-offset-limit

In a ...Listquery you can use offset and limit to return a specific subset of results:

  • offset: Specifies the first data set to return
  • limit: Specifies the maximum number of data sets to be returned

For example, to output the page of results containing up to five articles, starting from the fifth article from the complete results list:

query {
   articleList(offset: 5, limit: 5) {
    items {
      authorFragment {
        lastName
        firstName
      }
    }
  }
}
NOTE
  • Paging requires a stable sort order to work correctly across multiple queries requesting different pages of the same result set. By default it uses the repository path of each item of the result set to make sure that the order is always the same. If a different sort order is used, and if that sorting cannot be done at JCR query level, then there is a negative performance impact. The reason is because the entire result set must be loaded into memory before the pages are determined.

  • The higher the offset, the more time it takes to skip the items from the complete JCR query result set. An alternative solution for large result sets is to use the Paginated query with first and after method.

Paginated query - first and after paginated-first-after

The ...Paginated query type reuses most of the ...List query type features (filtering, sorting), but instead of using offset/limit arguments, it uses the first/after arguments as defined by the GraphQL Cursor Connections Specification. You can find a less formal introduction in the GraphQL introduction.

  • first: The n first items to return.
    The default is 50.
    The maximum is 100.
  • after: The cursor that determines the beginning of the requested page. The item represented by the cursor is not included in the result set. The cursor of an item is determined by the cursor field of the edges structure.

For example, output the page of results containing up to five adventures, starting from the given cursor item in the complete results list:

query {
    adventurePaginated(first: 5, after: "ODg1MmMyMmEtZTAzMy00MTNjLThiMzMtZGQyMzY5ZTNjN2M1") {
        edges {
          cursor
          node {
            title
          }
        }
        pageInfo {
          endCursor
          hasNextPage
        }
    }
}
NOTE
  • By default, paging uses the UUID of the repository node representing the fragment for ordering to ensure that the order of results is always the same. When sort is used, the UUID is implicitly used to ensure a unique sort; even for two items with identical sort keys.

  • Due to internal technical constraints, performance degrades if sorting and filtering is applied on nested fields. Therefore, use filter/sort fields stored at root level. This technique is also the recommended way if you want to query large paginated result sets.

GraphQL Persisted Queries - enabling caching in the Dispatcher graphql-persisted-queries-enabling-caching-dispatcher

CAUTION
If caching in the Dispatcher is enabled then the CORS Filter is not needed, and so that section can be ignored.

Caching of persisted queries is not enabled by default in the Dispatcher. Default enablement is not possible as customers using CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) with multiple origins need to review, and possibly update, their Dispatcher configuration.

NOTE
The Dispatcher does not cache the Vary header.
Caching of other CORS-related headers can be enabled in the Dispatcher, but might be insufficient when there are multiple CORS origins.

Enable caching of persisted queries enable-caching-persisted-queries

To enable the caching of persisted queries, the following updates to the Dispatcher configuration files are required:

  • <conf.d/rewrites/base_rewrite.rules>

    code language-xml
    # Allow the dispatcher to be able to cache persisted queries - they need an extension for the cache file
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/graphql/execute.json
    RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /$1;.json [PT]
    
    note note
    NOTE
    The Dispatcher adds the suffix .json to all persisted query URLS, so that the result can be cached.
    This is to ensure that the query conforms to the Dispatcher’s requirements for documents that can be cached. For further details see How does the Dispatcher return documents?
  • <conf.dispatcher.d/filters/ams_publish_filters.any>

    code language-xml
    # Allow GraphQL Persisted Queries & preflight requests
    /0110 { /type "allow" /method '(GET|POST|OPTIONS)' /url "/graphql/execute.json*" }
    

CORS configuration in the Dispatcher cors-configuration-in-dispatcher

Customers using CORS requests, might need to review and update their CORS configuration in the Dispatcher.

  • The Origin header must not be passed to AEM publish via the Dispatcher:

    • Check the clientheaders.any file.
  • Instead, CORS requests must be evaluated for allowed origins at the Dispatcher level. This approach also ensures that CORS related headers are set correctly, in one place, in all cases.

    • Such a configuration should be added to the vhost file. An example configuration is given below; for simplicity, only the CORS-related part has been provided. You can adapt it for your specific use cases.
    code language-xml
    <VirtualHost *:80>
       ServerName "publish"
    
       # ...
    
       <IfModule mod_headers.c>
           Header add X-Vhost "publish"
    
            ################## Start of the CORS specific configuration ##################
    
            SetEnvIfExpr "req_novary('Origin') == ''"  CORSType=none CORSProcessing=false
            SetEnvIfExpr "req_novary('Origin') != ''"  CORSType=cors CORSProcessing=true CORSTrusted=false
    
            SetEnvIfExpr "req_novary('Access-Control-Request-Method') == '' && %{REQUEST_METHOD} == 'OPTIONS' && req_novary('Origin') != ''  " CORSType=invalidpreflight CORSProcessing=false
            SetEnvIfExpr "req_novary('Access-Control-Request-Method') != '' && %{REQUEST_METHOD} == 'OPTIONS' && req_novary('Origin') != ''  " CORSType=preflight CORSProcessing=true CORSTrusted=false
            SetEnvIfExpr "req_novary('Origin') -strcmatch 'https://%{HTTP_HOST}*'"  CORSType=samedomain CORSProcessing=false
    
            # For requests that require CORS processing, check if the Origin can be trusted
            SetEnvIfExpr "%{HTTP_HOST} =~ /(.*)/ " ParsedHost=$1
    
            ################## Adapt the regex to match CORS origin for your environment
            SetEnvIfExpr "env('CORSProcessing') == 'true' && req_novary('Origin') =~ m#(https://.*.your-domain.tld(:\d+)?$)#" CORSTrusted=true
    
            # Extract the Origin header
            SetEnvIfNoCase ^Origin$ ^https://(.*)$ CORSTrustedOrigin=https://$1
    
            # Flush If already set
            Header unset Access-Control-Allow-Origin
            Header unset Access-Control-Allow-Credentials
    
            # Trusted
            Header always set Access-Control-Allow-Credentials "true" "expr=reqenv('CORSTrusted') == 'true'"
            Header always set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "%{CORSTrustedOrigin}e" "expr=reqenv('CORSTrusted') == 'true'"
            Header always set Access-Control-Allow-Methods "GET" "expr=reqenv('CORSTrusted') == 'true'"
            Header always set Access-Control-Max-Age 1800 "expr=reqenv('CORSTrusted') == 'true'"
            Header always set Access-Control-Allow-Headers "Origin, Accept, X-Requested-With, Content-Type, Access-Control-Request-Method, Access-Control-Request-Headers" "expr=reqenv('CORSTrusted') == 'true'"
    
            # Non-CORS or Not Trusted
            Header unset Access-Control-Allow-Credentials "expr=reqenv('CORSProcessing') == 'false' || reqenv('CORSTrusted') == 'false'"
            Header unset Access-Control-Allow-Origin "expr=reqenv('CORSProcessing') == 'false' || reqenv('CORSTrusted') == 'false'"
            Header unset Access-Control-Allow-Methods "expr=reqenv('CORSProcessing') == 'false' || reqenv('CORSTrusted') == 'false'"
            Header unset Access-Control-Max-Age "expr=reqenv('CORSProcessing') == 'false' || reqenv('CORSTrusted') == 'false'"
    
            # Always vary on origin, even if its not there.
            Header merge Vary Origin
    
            # CORS - send 204 for CORS requests which are not trusted
            RewriteCond expr "reqenv('CORSProcessing') == 'true' && reqenv('CORSTrusted') == 'false'"
            RewriteRule "^(.*)" - [R=204,L]
    
            ################## End of the CORS specific configuration ##################
    
       </IfModule>
    
       <Directory />
    
           # ...
    
       </Directory>
    
       # ...
    
    </VirtualHost>
    

GraphQL for AEM - Summary of Extensions graphql-extensions

The basic operation of queries with GraphQL for AEM adhere to the standard GraphQL specification. For GraphQL queries with AEM, there are a few extensions:

CORS Filter cors-filter

CAUTION
If caching in the Dispatcher has been enabled then the CORS Filter is not needed, and so this section can be ignored.
NOTE
For a detailed overview of the CORS resource sharing policy in AEM, see Understand Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS).

To access the GraphQL endpoint, configure a CORS policy in the customer Git repository. This configuration is done by adding an appropriate OSGi CORS configuration file for one or more desired endpoints.

This configuration must specify a trusted website origin alloworigin or alloworiginregexp for which access must be granted.

For example, to grant access to the GraphQL endpoint and persisted queries endpoint for https://my.domain you can use:

{
  "supportscredentials":true,
  "supportedmethods":[
    "GET",
    "HEAD",
    "POST"
  ],
  "exposedheaders":[
    ""
  ],
  "alloworigin":[
    "https://my.domain"
  ],
  "maxage:Integer":1800,
  "alloworiginregexp":[
    ""
  ],
  "supportedheaders":[
    "Origin",
    "Accept",
    "X-Requested-With",
    "Content-Type",
    "Access-Control-Request-Method",
    "Access-Control-Request-Headers"
  ],
  "allowedpaths":[
    "/content/_cq_graphql/global/endpoint.json",
    "/graphql/execute.json/.*"
  ]
}

If you have configured a vanity path for the endpoint, you can also use it in allowedpaths.

Referrer Filter referrer-filter

In addition to CORS configuration, a Referrer filter must be configured to allow access from third-party hosts.

This filter is done by adding an appropriate OSGi Referrer Filter configuration file that:

  • specifies a trusted website host name; either allow.hosts or allow.hosts.regexp,
  • grants access for this host name.

For example, to grant access for requests with the Referrer my.domain you can:

{
    "allow.empty":false,
    "allow.hosts":[
      "my.domain"
    ],
    "allow.hosts.regexp":[
      ""
    ],
    "filter.methods":[
      "POST",
      "PUT",
      "DELETE",
      "COPY",
      "MOVE"
    ],
    "exclude.agents.regexp":[
      ""
    ]
}
CAUTION
It remains the customer’s responsibility to:
  • only grant access to trusted domains
  • make sure that no sensitive information is exposed
  • not use a wildcard [*] syntax; this functionality disables authenticated access to the GraphQL endpoint and also expose it to the entire world.
CAUTION
All the GraphQL schemas (derived from Content Fragment Models that have been Enabled) are readable through the GraphQL endpoint.
This functionality means that you must ensure that no sensitive data is available, as it could be leaked this way. For example, it includes information that could be present as field names in the model definition.

Authentication authentication

See Authentication for Remote AEM GraphQL Queries on Content Fragments.

FAQs faqs

Questions that have arisen:

  1. Q: “How is the GraphQL API for AEM different from Query Builder API?

    • A:
      The AEM GraphQL API offers total control on the JSON output, and is an industry standard for querying content.
      In the future, AEM is planning to invest in the AEM GraphQL API.

Tutorial - Getting Started with AEM Headless and GraphQL tutorial

Looking for a hands-on tutorial? Check out Getting Started with AEM Headless and GraphQL end-to-end tutorial illustrating how to build-out and expose content using AEM’s GraphQL APIs and consumed by an external app, in a headless CMS scenario.

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