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acs.genericlists: Authorable Title/Value Lists

Module README · Repository · Original ACS Commons Generic Lists

acs.genericlists lets authors maintain a page of ordered title/value pairs (shared dropdown options, country codes, status labels, ...) through a normal Touch UI dialog, and lets any other code read that list back via Page#adaptTo(GenericList.class). It replaces ACS Commons' Generic Lists with a Cloud Service-friendly layout under /content/generic-lists instead of the legacy /etc/acs-commons/lists root.

What you get​

  • core -- GenericList / GenericListImpl / GenericListAdapterFactory: adapt a Page whose content resource type is acs-genericlists/components/utilities/genericlist and call getItems() or lookupTitle(value[, locale]).
  • ui.apps -- Touch UI dialog (composite multifield), page template restricted to /content/generic-lists(/.*)?, and a datasource JSP that feeds Granite select / radiogroup options from an existing list page.

Storage matches the ACS Commons shape: child nodes under ./list/, each with jcr:title and value. Authoring uses a modern Touch UI dialog instead of the MCP-generated classic UI form.

When to use it​

Use generic lists when:

  • Multiple dialogs need the same option set and authors should maintain it without a code deploy.
  • Backend code needs to resolve a stored value to a display title (optionally localized).
  • You want shared dropdown data without hardcoding options in every _cq_dialog.

Prefer Tags / taxonomies for hierarchical, multilingual content classification. Prefer a plain dialog select when the option set is tiny and never changes outside releases.

Example: read a list in Java​

Page listPage = pageManager.getPage("/content/generic-lists/countries");
GenericList list = listPage.adaptTo(GenericList.class);

for (GenericList.Item item : list.getItems()) {
    // item.getTitle(), item.getTitle(locale), item.getValue()
}

String title = list.lookupTitle("de"); // e.g. "Germany"

Example: feed a dialog select​

<country
        jcr:primaryType="nt:unstructured"
        sling:resourceType="granite/ui/components/coral/foundation/form/select"
        fieldLabel="Country"
        name="./country">
    <datasource
            jcr:primaryType="nt:unstructured"
            sling:resourceType="acs-genericlists/components/utilities/genericlist/datasource"
            path="/content/generic-lists/countries"/>
</country>

Authoring flow​

  1. Deploy the module (core + ui.apps).
  2. Create pages under /content/generic-lists with the genericlist template.
  3. Open the page properties dialog and add title/value rows in the multifield.
  4. Point dialog datasources (or Java adapters) at those list page paths.

What was not ported​

  • MCP-generated classic-UI dialog and /generic-lists.html bulk-properties console.
  • Legacy list.json.jsp JSON export (deprecated org.apache.sling.commons.json).
  • A page render script -- a list page is a pure data container.
  • The /etc/acs-commons/lists default root -- this module uses /content/generic-lists(/.*)? for AEMaaCS.

See the module README for the full rationale.

Building and deploying​

mvn clean install                                   # build
mvn clean install -PautoInstallBundle               # deploy core
mvn clean install -PautoInstallPackage              # deploy ui.apps packages