Starting AEM 6.0, new templating language Sightly now known as HTL is introduced. It offers highly productive enterprise-level web framework that increases security and allows HTML developers without Java knowledge to better participate in AEM projects.

Adobe recommends any new components to be developed using Sightly. Speaking of components, one of the vital components of any AEM application is a multifield component. More often than not, you will come across a requirement where you would have to create a multifield component, be it a social link component or a custom carousel component etc.  This post will talk about creating a multifield component in Sightly using Sling Models.

Infrastructure Used:

• AEM Instance : 6.2
• OS: Windows 10

Follow the below Steps to create the multifield component:

1. Firstly Create a sample AEM project using the maven archetype 10.
2. Create a new Sightly component. You can take reference from this article. Create the structure like below for multifield component (I would be sharing the complete code, don’t worry).
3. The links get saved in the below format.
4. Write a Sling Model to parse these links. Read my earlier post about the issue with sling models in 6.2.

</pre>
<pre>@Model(adaptables = Resource.class)
public class DemoMultiFieldModel {

    Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(DemoMultiFieldModel.class);

    @Inject
    @Named("links")
    private String[] links;

    private List<Link> list;

    @PostConstruct
    protected void init() throws JSONException {
        logger.info("links" + links);
        this.list = new ArrayList<Link>();
        for (String linkString : links) {
            JSONObject jsonObject = new JSONObject(linkString);
            logger.info("json object is " + jsonObject);
            list.add(new Link(jsonObject.getString("linktext"), jsonObject.getString("linkURL")));
        }
        logger.info("linkList is" + list);
    }

    public List<Link> getList() {
        return list;
    }
}</pre>
<pre>

1.  Now, invoke this model in your Sightly file.

Demo MultifieldPanel component
<p data-sly-test="${properties.heading}"> ${properties.heading}</p>
<p data-sly-test="${properties.desc}"> ${properties.desc}</p>

<div data-sly-use.linkModel="aem.bootstrap.core.models.DemoMultiFieldModel">
${linkModel.message}
<div data-sly-test="${linkModel.list}" data-sly-list.list="${linkModel.list}">
<b>page:</b> ${list.linktext}
<b>path:</b> ${list.linkURL}
</div>
</div>

1. You also have to add the nested-multifield.js since nested multifield is not supported OOTB. You can find it in the code repository below.

If everything is fine, your sightly component should look like below:

You can clone the code from here.

References :

https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/using/creating-sightly-component.html

https://sling.apache.org/documentation/bundles/models.html

https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/using/domparser.html

Hope it helps !! 🙂