Content Migration from CQ5 to Contentful

[Kailash07]

Hello Guys

We are exploring the option of content migration from CQ5 to Headless CMS ie Contentful. I would like to build the tool which can:

1) Inspect the components in AEM / CQ5

2) Identify their schema

3) Create a similar schema in Contentful

4) Then migrate the AEM content into Contentful

Does CQ5 provide any API to export the Component as XML or JSON? I can see Json export for component but I am not sure if this is there for CQ5? Any reference would be of great help.

Thanks

Kailash

[Asutosh_Jena_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Kailash07 

You can make the page rqeuest with infinity.json and it will give the complete content structure in JSON format in AEM.

Sample here:

http://localhost:4502/content/wknd/language-masters/en/magazine.infinity.json

Thanks!

[markus_bulla_adobe]

Hi @Kailash07!

There are several ways to export content from AEM. Let me list some of them:

• @Asutosh_Jena_already mentioned the .infinity.json selector+extension that exposes the content structure in a JSON format. It will list the whole content hierarchy with all subnodes. Be aware: depending on the size of your content tree you may want to split the query for certain subtrees of the content hierarchy and not just query the root node. 
• You can build a CRX content package of your content. If you unpack the resulting ZIP file you will find a folder structure and .content.xml files representing the content hierarchy.
• You can use the VLT tool to check out content from your repository.
• You can also check if AEMs JSON Exporter can support with your requirements.
• Please also note that AEM has some headless features and capabilities on board: there is a new GraphQL API, there are Content Services and there is the SPA Editor. These may be helpful either to retrieve content from AEM or to double check if a migration is actually necessary.

That being said, in my experience migrating from one CMS to another usually comes with some kind of transformation and restructuring of existing content. Sometimes it is even easier - and can support certain business goals - to create new content from scratch instead of migrating the old. Personally, I've never seen a 1:1 migration of content between different content management systems. I don't have a background on Contentful but for many systems you will be facing a completely different approach to content hierarchy and/or storage and it may be a very tough job to do a purely technical migration.

Hope that helps!