Alfresco Application Development Framework (ADF)

Introduction

See the introduction page in our documentation for an overview of ADF along with links to useful starting points.

Prerequisites

Node: 18.x
NPM: 9.x

Also, check out the tutorial: Creating your first ADF Application for full details on what you may need to install before using ADF.

See also

• Node Version Manager
• CORS guide

Installation

npm install   # or npm ci

This project has built-in supply chain attack protection. When you run npm install:

1. Preinstall check scans both package.json AND package-lock.json against OSV + GitHub Advisory databases
2. If malicious packages detected → installation blocked BEFORE any code runs
3. Packages install with --ignore-scripts (lifecycle scripts disabled for security)
4. Post-install check re-runs the security scan (defense in depth) and deletes node_modules if violations found
5. Trusted packages (esbuild, nx, husky, etc.) are rebuilt via npm rebuild to run their lifecycle scripts

Checking package.json catches new dependencies added during upgrades (e.g., nx migrate) before the lockfile is updated. If a malicious package is detected at any stage, installation is blocked.

To disable security checks (e.g., in CI environments):

ADF_SKIP_SECURITY_CHECK=1 npm install

To keep node_modules on violations (for debugging):

ADF_SECURITY_KEEP_NODE_MODULES=1 npm install

Components

You can find the sources for all ADF components in the lib folder.

Libraries

ADF Libraries list:

• Content services
• Core
• Extensions
• Insights
• Process Service Cloud
• Process service
• Stories

Browser Support

All components are supported in the following browsers:

Browser	Version
Chrome	Latest
Safari	Latest
Firefox	Latest
Edge	Latest