Develop Reference

Cannot 'GET' mLab Data b/c of CORS

I can't execute the 'GET' request with the getTasks() function.
$(document).ready(function(){
getTasks();
});
const apiKey = 'xxxxxxx';
function getTasks(){
$.ajax({
type: 'GET',
url: 'https://api.mlab.com/api/1/databases/taskmanager/collections/tasks?apiKey='+apiKey,
contentType: 'application/json',
xhrFields: {
withCredentials: true
},
success: function(data){
console.log(data);
},
error: function(){
console.log('FAIL')
}
})
}
The error that I get is:
api.mlab.com/api/1/databases/taskmanager/collections/tasks?apiKey=xxxxxxx
Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 400
(Bad Request)​
Response to preflight request doesn't pass access control check: No
'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested
resource. Origin 'null' is therefore not allowed access. The response
had HTTP status code 400.
I understand that Google-Chrome on Windows is CORS enabled, and will not (by default) allow communication with a different domain. I'm not sure what a preflight request is. Regardless, I tried to implement what I saw from Using CORS - HTML5 Rocks​ (from the CORS from jQuery section), but to no avail.

At a guess, the remote API simply does not respond to pre-flight requests for GET calls (because it shouldn't have to).
Your code is triggering a pre-flight request because it is non-simple. This is due to your adding a Content-type: application/json header. A request Content-type header is used to indicate the request payload format. As it is a GET, there is no payload.
Try this instead...
$.getJSON('https://api.mlab.com/api/1/databases/taskmanager/collections/tasks', {
apiKey: apiKey
}).done(function(data) {
console.log(data)
}).fail(function() {
console.log('FAIL')
})

CORS is there to protect you. If you want some more info on it, wikipedia has a good entry on it.
It appears the issue here is that you're trying to access your mongodb hosted by mlab directly from your web app. As you can see in your code, you're providing credentials/api keys to make that request.
My guess is that mlab's intent of not allowing CORS is to prevent you from doing this. You should never put your private API keys in html to be hosted on a web page, as it's easily accessible by reading source code. Then someone would have direct access to your mongodb.
Instead, you should create a server-side application (node, or... ** Whatever **) that exposes an api you control on the same domain (or a domain you give permission to via CORS).
As far as the "preflight" request, if you look in your chrome debugging tools, you should see an additional request go out with the "OPTIONS" method. This is the request that chrome (and most other http clients) send out first to a server hosted on a different domain. it's looking for the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header to find out whether it's allowed to make the request. Pretty interesting stuff if you ever have some time to dig into it.

Cross domain AJAX called with JSONP returns plain JSON

I have encountered a problem with an API I want to use. The API returns plain JSON but its a cross domain AJAX call so I have to use jsonp.
$.ajax({
type: "GET",
url: url + query,
contentType: "application/json",
dataType: "jsonp",
success: function(data){
console.log(data);
}
});
The problem is when I change the dataType to "json" an error occurs:
No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested
resource. Origin 'X' is therefore not allowed access.
This is because its a cross domain ajax call. But when it is jsonp it says:
Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token :
In other words it does not recognize the json format.
I am using jquery for the ajax call. Any suggestions how to solve this?

Since you dont have access to the server where the API is hosted, you use can a web service utility like CURL to access the API. AJAX calls requires CORS (Cross Origin Resource Sharing) to be enabled on the server where the API is served.
You can call a web service on your local server page via AJAX from where the CURL call will be made and appropriate response returned.

There are several methods of bypassing cross-domain restrictions (CORS, JSONP, Iframe transport, etc.) but all methods have in common that the API server needs to corporate. So if you don’t have privileges on the API server, you cannot come across the cross-domain restrictions.
The only way to make this work would be putting a proxy in front of the API that you can control (the proxy could either live on the same domain or inject the appropriate CORS headers). However, this will affect performance and might also have legal implications.
Regarding JSONP, here’s an excellent explanation of how and why this works:
What is JSONP all about?

REST request from app works, but not from javascript

I'm building an app that has to get and set data at a remote web service through requests. When I use the jQuery GET request it works fine, I can request data from the service without any problems, but when I use PUT I get some erros:
OPTIONS http://myurl.com 501 (Unsupported method
('OPTIONS'))
OPTIONS http://myurl.com Origin null is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin.
I've tried almost anything to get this to work, but it won't work. I've download a chrome app called REST Console, which can make custom REST requests. The strange thing is that I can interact with my server over that app but not through my javascript!
This is the javascript:
$.ajax({
url: 'http://myurl.com',
type: 'PUT',
data: '<time>16:00</time>',
success: function(data) { alert(data); }
});
Could anybody tell me what is going on here?

First ensure you're serving the page that runs the script from a web server, not directly from the file system.
I'm guessing your service at http://myurl.com is at a different host name to the host name your page is being served from? For it to work in this case you need to implement HTTP headers to support Cross Origin Resource Sharing.
Your service at http://myurl.com needs to handle an HTTP OPTIONS request, the response to which should be a set of HTTP headers (with no content) as follows:
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://url-of-page-with-javascript/
Optionally you can also specify Access-Control-Allow-Credentials, Access-Control-Allow-Headers and Access-Control-Allow-Methods. See the full specification here.
You'll also need to add the same headers with the same values when your server responds to the PUT request - obviously the content will also be included with this response.

Steam API Get SteamID using Javascript

Been running into what appears to be the Same Origin Policy which is causing quite some headache!
To cut to the chase, I am essentially trying to acquire a user's steam64id when only supplied their username.
For example, my username: "Emperor_Jordan" I would go to:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/emperor_jordan?xml=1
And the steamid I need is right at the top. So I figured I would use JQuery Ajax to acquire this and parse out the id I need for later usage (steamapi usage requires the steam64id) as follows. Here is a snippet of the code in question:
$.ajax({
url: "http://steamcommunity.com/id/emperor_jordan/?xml=1",
datatype: "xml",
complete: function()
{
alert(this.url)
},
success: parse
});
function parse(xml)
{
alert("parsing");
_steamID = $(xml).find("steamID64").text();
}
The problem here is while I do get the alert for the completion, I never see "parsing". Ever. It never gets that callback, which leads me to believe I am running into the SOP (same origin policy).
Am I approaching this the wrong way, is there a workaround?
Thanks!

Correct. You are running into the same-origin policy:
XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://steamcommunity.com/id/emperor_jordan/?xml=1. Origin http://fiddle.jshell.net is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin.
and it looks like Steam does not offer a cross-origin solution like JSONP. That means you're back to the old-but-reliable solution: fetch the data on your server, not in the browser.
Some relevant feedback on the Steam Web API: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steam_Web_API/Feedback#API_Considerations_for_Web_Developers

You need to create a proxy server in Heroku in order to get the data. Cors is restricting us to call the data directly to our browser not server to server interaction. So we need a proxy server to send the requests and receive the data on our behalf. It's working for me.
Thanks in advance.

jQuery, CORS, JSON (without padding) and authentication issues

I have two domains. I'm trying to access a JSON object from one domain through a page on another. I've read everything I could find regarding this issue, and still can't figure this out.
The domain serving the JSON has the following settings:
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Methods "GET, OPTIONS"
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Headers "origin, authorization, accept"
From my other domain, I'm calling the following:
$.ajax({
type:'get',
beforeSend: function(xhr) {
var auth = // authentication;
xhr.setRequestHeader("Authorization", "Basic " + auth);
}
url:myUrl,
dataType:'json',
error: function(xhr, textStatus, errorThrown) { console.log(textStatus, errorThrown); }
})
I know that 'auth' is initialized properly (logged and checked). However, this does not work. In Firefox's Console, I get
Request URL: ...
Request Method:
OPTIONS
Status Code:
HTTP/1.1 401 Authorization Required
If I get rid of the beforeSend:... part, I see the following
Request Method:
GET
Status Code:
HTTP/1.1 401 Authorization Required
However, the domain serving JSON also can serve JSONP. I don't want to use this, mainly because the application will be running constantly on a dedicated browser, and I'm worried about this issue. More importantly, I would really like to know what is actually wrong with what I am doing. I know that for practical purposes there are various ways to overcome the JSONP memory leak (such as not using jQuery).
At any rate, when I did use JSONP, my code looked like this:
$.ajax({
url:newUrl,
dataType:'jsonp',
jsonp:'jsonp'
}).done(function(d){console.log(d)})
This gets the following
Request Method:
GET
Status Code:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
after it prompts me with an alert box for a username and password.
Is there a fundamental difference in the way jQuery handles JSONP requests as opposed to JSON requests? And if so, how can I fix this?
Thanks.
Edit: Here's what I did find.
Basically, because I need authentication, the GET request is sending an Authorization header. However, this is not a "simple" header, and so the browser is sending a pre-flight request (the OPTIONS). This preflight request doesn't have any authentication, though, and so the server was rejecting it. The "solution" was to set the server to let OPTIONS request not require authentication, and report an HTTP status of 200 to it.
Reference: http://www.kinvey.com/blog/item/61-kinvey-adds-cross-origin-resource-sharing-cors
mail-archive[.com]/c-user#axis.apache.org/msg00790.html (not allowed to post more links)
Unfortunately, the "solution" is only working on Firefox and not Chrome. Chrome simply shows the request in red, but doesn't give me any more info on why it failed.
Edit 2: Fixed on Chrome: The server I was trying to get data from had a security certificate which was not trusted. The preflight request on Chrome failed because of this. Solution
superuser[.com]/questions/27268/how-do-i-disable-the-warning-chrome-gives-if-a-security-certificate-is-not-trust (not allowed to post more links)

Welp, now that I have enough rep a while later, I might as well answer this question and accept it.
When you attempt to send a GET json request to a server with headers, the browser first sends an OPTION request to make sure that you can access it. Unfortunately, this OPTION request cannot carry with it any authentication. This means that if you want to send a GET with auth, the server must allow an OPTION without auth. Once I did this, things started working.

Some examples available here may illustrate further how access control can be combined with CORS. Specifically the credentialed GET example. Access control requires that the request set the withCredentials flag to true on the XMLHttpRequest, and for the server handling the OPTIONS method to do two things:
Set Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true
Not use a wildcard * in the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header. This has to be set to the origin exactly according to the MDN docs on HTTP access control (CORS).
Essentially, the thing processing the OPTIONS request needs to send back appropriate response headers so you can make that credentialed request.
In your question you stated that the service you are interacting with is returning Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *, which is not compatible with a credentialed cross-domain request. This needs to return the origin specifically.
The aforementioned MDN Http Access Control (CORS) documentation also links to the Server-Side Access Control documentation outlining how a server would potentially respond to various cross domain requests - including handling a cross domain credentialed POST request that requires you to send back the correct headers in response to the OPTIONS method. You can find that example here.

Why don't you try typing the URL you are fetching the JSON from into your browser and seeing what happens. It sounds like you literally just need to authenticate into this other website to access it.
If your site needs to work in other browsers like IE, you WILL need JSONP, by the way. The security won't allow the cross site request to work. The headers won't change that. I believe you will also need to add a security policy in your headers.