All you need to know about Adobe Client Data Layer

What is Adobe Client Data Layer

A data layer in general consists of a JavaScript client side event driven data store that can be used on webpages, to collect data about what the visitors experience on the web page & to communicate this data to digital analytics and reporting servers(e.g. Adobe analytics or Adobe target)

What does it do?

The Adobe client data layer is a java script store for data and events happening on a page within the scope of a request. It reduce the effort to instrument websites by providing a standardized method to expose and access any kind of data for any script. 

It provides API to,

1) Register data that is to be merged into the data layer state
2) Trigger events that relate to the data stored in the data layer
3) Get the current data layer state of all merged data
4) Register listeners that are called for specific events or data changes

Steps to set up a data layer

1) Loading the data layer script
2) Declare the adobeDatalayer array

Once above steps has been configred, we can work on various push menthods(  Push the Data object/ Push Event Object/Push functions) Events (registering & unregistering)

The AEM Core Components are availed with Adobe Client Data Layer(Disabled by default - we need to enable it if we have plans to use it).

To push the data from website to Analytics, we need Adobe Client Data Layer extension & Adobe Analytics, Core Extensions to be configured.

Some of the use cases
1) Retrieving Analytics data & using it for Personalization
2) Trigger an update event on page when the stock market value changes

 Reference URLs:

 Adobe client data layer - https://github.com/adobe/adobe-client-data-layer

Wiki - https://github.com/adobe/adobe-client-data-layer/wiki