Building with AEM: Lessons from Enterprise
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Six years working with Adobe Experience Manager taught me how to ship maintainable frontend code in constrained environments. The patterns that survive contact with enterprise reality.
Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is both a powerful platform and a challenging one. After years of enterprise delivery on AEM, I've built patterns that keep frontend code clean even in its most constrained environments.
Treat Sling Models as your API layer
Frontend engineers in AEM often mix business logic into HTL templates. Don't. Use Sling Models as a clean separation layer — they're your server-side API, and your frontend (HTL or React components via SPA Editor) should consume them as simple data objects.
Build a component library outside AEM
If you're building a React SPA within AEM, develop your component library as a standalone Storybook. Keep AEM-specific concerns — model bindings, edit config, policy dialogs — in a thin wrapper layer. This makes components testable, reusable, and migratable.
Client libraries are a pain point — manage them
AEM's clientlib system is notoriously difficult to debug. Establish naming conventions early (project.base, project.components, project.page), document dependency chains, and use the clientlib debugger on every deployment.
Replication pipelines deserve respect
Understand your replication topology. Know which agents run on publish, which run on author. Cache invalidation failures are the single most common source of "why is my change not showing up" incidents in AEM. Build a runbook for them.
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