AEM 6 SP2 - Accessing CRX Remotely using Jcr Remoting Based On Webdav (DavEx)

Goal

To access CRX remotely in a client java program, JCR Remoting (DavEx) or RMI can be used. This post is on using JCR Remoting (aka WebDav remoting, DavEx). For RMI check this post

More documentation:

http://wiki.apache.org/jackrabbit/RemoteAccess

https://docs.adobe.com/docs/en/crx/2-3/developing/accessing_the_crx.html

Solution

1) If maven is used, following are the dependencies

<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.jcr</groupId>
<artifactId>jcr</artifactId>
<version>2.0</version>
</dependency>  
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.jackrabbit</groupId>
<artifactId>jackrabbit-jcr2dav</artifactId>
<version>2.4.0</version>
</dependency> 
<dependency>
<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
<artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
<version>1.7.5</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

2) Without maven, to connect to CRX in a plain java standalone program, the following jars should be added to classpath. These jars can be downloaded from Adobe repo - Nexus

Assuming jars are available in user's .m2 folder, the following paths should be added to classpath

3) A sample standalone program for connecting to CRX using DavEx and execute query, returning templates (type cq:Template)

package apps;

import org.apache.jackrabbit.commons.JcrUtils;

import javax.jcr.*;
import javax.jcr.query.Query;
import javax.jcr.query.QueryManager;

public class DavExWebDavRemotingTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
        String REPO = "http://localhost:4502/crx/server";
        String WORKSPACE = "crx.default";

        Repository repository = JcrUtils.getRepository(REPO);

        Session session = repository.login(new SimpleCredentials("admin", "admin".toCharArray()), WORKSPACE);
        QueryManager qm = session.getWorkspace().getQueryManager();

        String stmt = "select * from cq:Template";
        Query q = qm.createQuery(stmt, Query.SQL);

        NodeIterator results = q.execute().getNodes();
        Node node = null;

        while(results.hasNext()){
            node = (Node)results.next();
            System.out.println(node.getPath());
        }

        session.logout();
    }
}