In my previous post, Mastering AEM Dispatcher Part 5: Managing Redirects Like a Master, I introduced an easy way to maintain lists of redirects in AEM. After using the tool for awhile, the team suggested some improvements to make it easier to maintain redirect maps, especially when maintaining an existing list of redirects.
Most users found the process of downloading the file, making updates and re-uploading confusing as it was easy to accidentally upload the wrong file to the wrong configuration.
To make it easier to add, update and remove individual entries, I added a new editor to allow users to create, find and remove entries from the redirect list. The latest version ACS AEM Commons, version 3.17.0, includes an new Edit Entries tab which makes it easy for administrators and advanced users to modify the redirect map without having to deal with uploading and downloading redirect map files.
Finding Entries
When you first switch to the Edit Entries tab, then entry list will be empty, enter a value into the search field and select Find Entries to filter entries containing the term you specify. To view all entries, enter * and then click Find Entries, though depending on the number of entries in the redirect map, this can cause performance problems.
The entry list will contain all of the entries loaded from the file and from the property configurations, as denoted by the Origin column. In each entry row, you can choose to remove entries from the file and click the pencil to directly open the AEM editor for a property entry.
Adding an Entry
Instead of having to upload a new redirect map file, you can add entries through a form above the list of entries. Simply enter the redirect Source and the Target URL and the entry will be added into the redirect map.
Detecting Errors
One of the great new features is detection of errors in both the files and the configured properties. This makes it easier for you to identify potential problems such as duplicate entries, entries with too many values or entries without a target.
Each entry in error will be called out in a warning block and the entry will be highlighted in red in the entry list.
The new entry editor makes it far easier to maintain redirect maps using Redirect Manager, download the latest version of ACS AEM Commons to get started with it today!
This is the sixth post in the Mastering the AEM Dispatcher series. In the previous post, we introduced the redirect map manager. In the next post, we’ll discuss securing the AEM Dispatcher.
