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Is there a community project for using images from another AEM server?

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Level 3

Hi, I'm a Drupal Developer who is transitioning to AEM.  In Drupal, there's a community module (free and open source) named "Stage File Proxy."  It lets you use your local development sandbox without worrying about installing gigantic sets of images.  You simply configure your sandbox to point to an external server that contains all the images you're interested in.  If your sandbox requests an image that doesn't exist, it instead tries to render it from the server, and optionally installs it locally.

I would love to work on a community project like that in AEM if it doesn't exist.  Unfortunately, my current AEM/Java knowledge is very limited, and like almost anyone reading this, my time is very constrained due to current job demands.  Thanks in advance for any recommendations that can help avoid reinventing the wheel.  If you are currently working on something like this, please let me know, and I'll gladly help any way I can (coding, testing, documentation).

-Nestor

10 Replies

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Level 10

WIth AEM - best practice is to place the assets in the local AEM DAM. As you are new to AEM and the DAM - i recommend that you watch this webinar on the DAM -- Scott's Digital Community: Ask the AEM Community Expert Session: Best Practices for Experience Manag...

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Level 3

@smacdonald, thanks very much for that link--will check it out.  I'm fairly familiar with AEM architecture but a lowly novice AEM developer.  It'll be a good six months to a year before I have the skills to create something like I described.  Was hoping there was a clever community module out there that when enabled:

-intercepts the request for an image (possibly a servlet filter)

-if it's not in the local sandbox DAM, it requests the resource from another server that does.

I know this is possible, and am still hoping someone's already created this extremely useful utility.  Loading lots of images into your local DAM is tedious and takes forever.  I really do appreciate your response though, and if that webinar answers my question, I'll mark your answer correct.

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Administrator

I have asked internal Communities Engg team to look at this one.

~Kautuk



Kautuk Sahni

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Level 3

kautuksahni​, thanks so much for forwarding it to that team.  Looking forward to hearing any ideas and/or knowledge about any existing community projects that cover this.

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Level 10

"Loading lots of images into your local DAM is tedious and takes forever"

You can write tools that can help upload assets faster - check this out - a tool that reads XML and loads the Assets -- see

Scott's Digital Community: Automating the process of uploading multiple digital assets to the Adobe ...

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Level 3

smacdonald2008​, thanks for posting again.  I think that will definitely come in handy.  Still, I'm really asking if there's a way to serve the images from an external server without having them stored in my local sandbox's DAM.  I don't want my sandbox DAM to be externally located either, which I saw is one option folks are using for solutions involving Docker.  Again, thanks for helpful info--it just doesn't answer my question.

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Level 10

"if there's a way to serve the images from an external server without having them stored in my local sandbox's DAM"

The typical way to serve images from AEM is to place the images in the AEM DAM and then use the AEM server like any server that serves images.

For example - if your domain as TravelPics.com and you want to serve images located in the DAM - such as:

AADAM.png

You can access bc2.jpg using an URL like -- http://TravelPics.com/content/dam/travel/bc2.jpg

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Level 3

smacdonald2008​, you are providing very useful info, however it doesn't answer the question.  The custom utility would:

  1. be installed through package manager.
  2. not modify any content/properties in your jcr_tree (unless there was an configurable option implemented to also save missing images into your sandbox DAM).
  3. have a configurable server name as one of its properties (the server with the images in its DAM).
  4. dynamically handle all the logic for streaming any images from an external server if it doesn't exist in your sandbox DAM.
  5. allow you to disable/re-enable it as needed (e.g., in case you only want to use your local DAM at some point).

So the only work the developer would do to use the utility is:

  1. install the custom utility package in Package Manager.
  2. set the external server that contains the DAM images.
  3. check an option for the utility to install each missing image retrieved into your local DAM (just a bonus wish).
  4. turn the utility on/off as needed.

It would provide similar functionality to the Drupal module "Stage File Proxy."  I really am more than willing to help create this, but it's going to be a long time before I have the skills to do it solo.  And I don't want to start it until I know there's nothing out there that does this.  Thanks again smacdonald2008.

-Nestor

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Level 10

Nice explanation of what you wanted. It cleared up what you were asking. The answer to you question is no - there is no project that I am aware of that fits this description. We would love for you to help develop a custom tool like this that would benefit the AEM DEV community.

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Level 3

smacdonald2008, thanks for all your replies.  I'll follow up with @kautuksahni to make sure the community isn't aware of anything already going on with this concept.  If not, I'll give it a shot.