Create Custom OSGI Configuration in AEM

OSGI (Open Service Gateway Initiative) is a major building block in aem architecture which makes it modular. In AEM, there is a common need of creating custom OSGi configuration. These Configurations can be a single value,multi-value,drop down list and check box like property.

In this tutorial i have tried to cover all the available options for creating custom OSGi configuration in aem.

How to Set and Get OSGI configuration values using Text Field.
How to Set and Get OSGI configuration values using Drop Down List.
How to Set and Get OSGI configuration values using Check Box.
How to Set and Get OSGI configuration values using Multi Field.

Set and Get OSGI configuration values using Textfield:

When user wants to get and set single value in osgi configuration, Text Field is preferred.

Setting Values:

@Property(label="Name of the Author",value = "author")
@Property(label="Age of the Author",intValue = 15)

Getting Values:

private static final String AUTHOR_NAME = "author.value";
private static final String AUTHOR_AGE = "author.age";

value: This property indicates default value of the configuration.
intValue : If you want to take only integer value ,use this property to set default value.

Note:- @Property annotation helps us to define the properties in felix console.

Set and Get OSGI configuration values using Drop Down List:

Drop Down list is a very common requirement that a developer encounters, when customer wants to display list of countries, states, gender etc to choose from felix console.

Note:- User can add as many options in the list , but select only once at a time.

Setting Values:

@Property(
    label = "Author Gender",
    description = "Describe Author Gender",
    options = {
        @PropertyOption(name = "Male", value = "1. Male"),
        @PropertyOption(name = "Female", value = "2. Female")
    },
    value = "Female")

Getting Values:

private static final String AUTHOR_GENDER = "author.gender";

Set and Get OSGI configuration values using CheckBox :

Check Box is a good solution when number of options are limited, and customers wants to select single or multiple values from felix console.

Note:- The Value of this property is boolean ,we can set default value by the attribute boolValue.

Setting Values:

@Property(label = "CheckBox Property " ,boolValue = false,description = "please Check the Property")

Getting Values:

public static final String CHECKBOX_PROPERTY = "checkBox.property";

Set and Get OSGI configuration values using Multi-Field :

Multifield Components is the most preffered component by developers when their is a requirement of creating a custom configuration which consist dynamic number of fields. We can add as many values in it as per our requirement

 @Property(value={"English", "Hindi"}, unbounded = PropertyUnbounded.ARRAY, label = "Subjects", cardinality = 50, description = "Example for Multi field config")
private static final String MULTI_FIELD = "multifield";

Now in order to fetch the values we require two methods:

Activate: This method is called only once when the bundle is activated.
Modified: When we made the changes in our configurations, then we need to fetch the values from this method because the bundle is already activated.

@Activate
protected void activate(@SuppressWarnings("rawtypes") final Map context) {
    this.name = PropertiesUtil.toString(context.get(AUTHOR_NAME), "");
    this.gender = PropertiesUtil.toString(context.get(AUTHOR_GENDER),"");
    this.checkbox = PropertiesUtil.toBoolean(context.get(CHECKBOX_PROPERTY),true);
    this.multiString = PropertiesUtil.toStringArray(context.get(MULTI_FIELD));
    this.age = PropertiesUtil.toInteger(context.get(AUTHOR_AGE),12);

}

@Modified
protected void modified(ComponentContext context){
    this.name = PropertiesUtil.toString(
        context.getProperties().get(AUTHOR_NAME), "");
    this.gender = PropertiesUtil.toString(
        context.getProperties().get(AUTHOR_GENDER), "");
    this.checkbox = PropertiesUtil.toBoolean(
            context.getProperties().get(CHECKBOX_PROPERTY), true);
     this.multiString = PropertiesUtil.toStringArray(
              context.getProperties().get(MULTI_FIELD));
    this.age = PropertiesUtil.toInteger(
            context.getProperties().get(AUTHOR_AGE),12);
}