Develop Reference

How to solve CORS Origin issue when trying to get data of a json file from localhost

I was trying to get the data from a json file (which is on the remote server) from localhost and I am getting error 'from origin 'http://localhost:5000' has been blocked by CORS policy: Response to preflight request doesn't pass access control check: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource.'
Below is the code I used to send the get request.
$.ajax({
url: 'http://abc/some.json',
type: "GET",
dataType: "json",
headers: {
"Access-Control-Request-Headers": "*",
"Access-Control-Request-Method": "*",
'Content-Type':'application/json'
},
success: function (data) {
alert(data);
chatbotConfig = data;
console.log(chatbotConfig);
}
})
I am able to get the data using postman. I understand that postman is not a browser so it is not limited by CORS policy. But I am able to download the content from json file directly from the browser. Nit able to understand why I am facing issue when I tried to access from localhost. Can any one please help me to resolve this issue.

Well, the CORS error may lie in different layers of your application. Usually, by allowing all (*) origins and headers in the server-side, your problem should be fixed. But sometimes it won't and it lies somewhere else like your HTTP request header or body, DNS settings (Making sure there are no third-party DNS set in your network by yourself through the OS), or browser settings. So I will describe all of the possible solutions here shortly.
NOTE: You can read more about CORS policy here.
How to solve CORS error
If you have access to your server-side settings and/or options you need to make sure (Or if you don't you need to ask your backend developer) that everything set correctly there or not. So the steps will be as follows:
First of all, you need to make sure your server configs for CORS are set correctly.
So for example, if you are using Apache you can set the CORS policy in your .htaccess file like this (or simply check if it exists):
// This will allow all origins to access your server
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*" // You can set * to whatever domain
Header add Access-Control-Allow-Methods "*"
If you are using nodeJS you can check or set it like this:
app.use((req, res, next) => {
res.setHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "*");
res.header(
"Access-Control-Allow-Headers",
"Origin, X-Requested-With, Content-Type, Accept"
);
next();
});
If you are using Nginx you can check or set it in nginx.conf like this:
server {
location / {
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*";
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Methods "*";
}
}
If you use any other service for your server-side you should read the documentation about it, but all of them are actually same.
If you checked the above step and CORS policy was set correctly in your server-side, you may need to check your HTTP request and make sure everything is set correctly there. For example, there is no need to add these two headers
"Access-Control-Request-Headers": "*",
"Access-Control-Request-Method": "*",
in your request, because they do not exist as a header in the client-side. Wrong HTTP request API end-point address or options (like dataType), wrong HTTP request body or headers may also cause the CORS error for your here. So you need to check them all and make sure you are set them correctly.
If none of the above was the problem you can try two other approaches. I mostly encourage to use the second one if none of the above solves your problem.
Mapping your localhost to a URL using your hosts file (Usually lies under etc folder in each operating system). You can do that like this (But it's better to read the documentation for each OS).
127.0.0.1 www.test.com ## map 127.0.0.1 to www.test.com
## or
localhost www.test.com
NOTE: Usually it is better to avoid this approach.
Use browser plugins like Allow CORS.

Basically if you clearly look into the issue logs:
'from origin 'http://localhost:5000' has been blocked by CORS policy: Response to preflight request doesn't pass access control check: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource
It's saying CORS not enabled at resource. which means it need to be fixed or allowed at server side.

Can't get basic HTTP POST function to work from localhost with Javascript [duplicate]

I am building a web API. I found whenever I use Chrome to POST, GET to my API, there is always an OPTIONS request sent before the real request, which is quite annoying. Currently, I get the server to ignore any OPTIONS requests. Now my question is what's good to send an OPTIONS request to double the server's load? Is there any way to completely stop the browser from sending OPTIONS requests?

edit 2018-09-13: added some precisions about this pre-flight request and how to avoid it at the end of this reponse.
OPTIONS requests are what we call pre-flight requests in Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS).
They are necessary when you're making requests across different origins in specific situations.
This pre-flight request is made by some browsers as a safety measure to ensure that the request being done is trusted by the server.
Meaning the server understands that the method, origin and headers being sent on the request are safe to act upon.
Your server should not ignore but handle these requests whenever you're attempting to do cross origin requests.
A good resource can be found here http://enable-cors.org/
A way to handle these to get comfortable is to ensure that for any path with OPTIONS method the server sends a response with this header
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
This will tell the browser that the server is willing to answer requests from any origin.
For more information on how to add CORS support to your server see the following flowchart
http://www.html5rocks.com/static/images/cors_server_flowchart.png
edit 2018-09-13
CORS OPTIONS request is triggered only in somes cases, as explained in MDN docs:
Some requests don’t trigger a CORS preflight. Those are called “simple requests” in this article, though the Fetch spec (which defines CORS) doesn’t use that term. A request that doesn’t trigger a CORS preflight—a so-called “simple request”—is one that meets all the following conditions:
The only allowed methods are:
GET
HEAD
POST
Apart from the headers set automatically by the user agent (for example, Connection, User-Agent, or any of the other headers with names defined in the Fetch spec as a “forbidden header name”), the only headers which are allowed to be manually set are those which the Fetch spec defines as being a “CORS-safelisted request-header”, which are:
Accept
Accept-Language
Content-Language
Content-Type (but note the additional requirements below)
DPR
Downlink
Save-Data
Viewport-Width
Width
The only allowed values for the Content-Type header are:
application/x-www-form-urlencoded
multipart/form-data
text/plain
No event listeners are registered on any XMLHttpRequestUpload object used in the request; these are accessed using the XMLHttpRequest.upload property.
No ReadableStream object is used in the request.

Have gone through this issue, below is my conclusion to this issue and my solution.
According to the CORS strategy (highly recommend you read about it) You can't just force the browser to stop sending OPTIONS request if it thinks it needs to.
There are two ways you can work around it:
Make sure your request is a "simple request"
Set Access-Control-Max-Age for the OPTIONS request
Simple request
A simple cross-site request is one that meets all the following conditions:
The only allowed methods are:
GET
HEAD
POST
Apart from the headers set automatically by the user agent (e.g. Connection, User-Agent, etc.), the only headers which are allowed to be manually set are:
Accept
Accept-Language
Content-Language
Content-Type
The only allowed values for the Content-Type header are:
application/x-www-form-urlencoded
multipart/form-data
text/plain
A simple request will not cause a pre-flight OPTIONS request.
Set a cache for the OPTIONS check
You can set a Access-Control-Max-Age for the OPTIONS request, so that it will not check the permission again until it is expired.
Access-Control-Max-Age gives the value in seconds for how long the response to the preflight request can be cached for without sending another preflight request.
Limitation Noted
For Chrome, the maximum seconds for Access-Control-Max-Age is 600 which is 10 minutes, according to chrome source code
Access-Control-Max-Age only works for one resource every time, for example, GET requests with same URL path but different queries will be treated as different resources. So the request to the second resource will still trigger a preflight request.

Please refer this answer on the actual need for pre-flighted OPTIONS request: CORS - What is the motivation behind introducing preflight requests?
To disable the OPTIONS request, below conditions must be satisfied for ajax request:
Request does not set custom HTTP headers like 'application/xml' or 'application/json' etc
The request method has to be one of GET, HEAD or POST. If POST, content type should be one of application/x-www-form-urlencoded, multipart/form-data, or text/plain
Reference:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Access_control_CORS

When you have the debug console open and the Disable Cache option turned on, preflight requests will always be sent (i.e. before each and every request). if you don't disable the cache, a pre-flight request will be sent only once (per server)

Yes it's possible to avoid options request. Options request is a preflight request when you send (post) any data to another domain. It's a browser security issue. But we can use another technology: iframe transport layer. I strongly recommend you forget about any CORS configuration and use readymade solution and it will work anywhere.
Take a look here:
https://github.com/jpillora/xdomain
And working example:
http://jpillora.com/xdomain/

For a developer who understands the reason it exists but needs to access an API that doesn't handle OPTIONS calls without auth, I need a temporary answer so I can develop locally until the API owner adds proper SPA CORS support or I get a proxy API up and running.
I found you can disable CORS in Safari and Chrome on a Mac.
Disable same origin policy in Chrome
Chrome: Quit Chrome, open an terminal and paste this command: open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app --args --disable-web-security --user-data-dir
Safari: Disabling same-origin policy in Safari
If you want to disable the same-origin policy on Safari (I have 9.1.1), then you only need to enable the developer menu, and select "Disable Cross-Origin Restrictions" from the develop menu.

As mentioned in previous posts already, OPTIONS requests are there for a reason. If you have an issue with large response times from your server (e.g. overseas connection) you can also have your browser cache the preflight requests.
Have your server reply with the Access-Control-Max-Age header and for requests that go to the same endpoint the preflight request will have been cached and not occur anymore.

I have solved this problem like.
if($_SERVER['REQUEST_METHOD'] == 'OPTIONS' && ENV == 'devel') {
header('Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *');
header('Access-Control-Allow-Headers: X-Requested-With');
header("HTTP/1.1 200 OK");
die();
}
It is only for development. With this I am waiting 9ms and 500ms and not 8s and 500ms. I can do that because production JS app will be on the same machine as production so there will be no OPTIONS but development is my local.

You can't but you could avoid CORS using JSONP.

After spending a whole day and a half trying to work through a similar problem I found it had to do with IIS.
My Web API project was set up as follows:
// WebApiConfig.cs
public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config)
{
var cors = new EnableCorsAttribute("*", "*", "*");
config.EnableCors(cors);
//...
}
I did not have CORS specific config options in the web.config > system.webServer node like I have seen in so many posts
No CORS specific code in the global.asax or in the controller as a decorator
The problem was the app pool settings.
The managed pipeline mode was set to classic (changed it to integrated) and the Identity was set to Network Service (changed it to ApplicationPoolIdentity)
Changing those settings (and refreshing the app pool) fixed it for me.

OPTIONS request is a feature of web browsers, so it's not easy to disable it. But I found a way to redirect it away with proxy. It's useful in case that the service endpoint just cannot handle CORS/OPTIONS yet, maybe still under development, or mal-configured.
Steps:
Setup a reverse proxy for such requests with tools of choice (nginx, YARP, ...)
Create an endpoint just to handle the OPTIONS request. It might be easier to create a normal empty endpoint, and make sure it handles CORS well.
Configure two sets of rules for the proxy. One is to route all OPTIONS requests to the dummy endpoint above. Another to route all other requests to actual endpoint in question.
Update the web site to use proxy instead.
Basically this approach is to cheat browser that OPTIONS request works. Considering CORS is not to enhance security, but to relax the same-origin policy, I hope this trick could work for a while. :)

you can also use a API Manager (like Open Sources Gravitee.io) to prevent CORS issues between frontend app and backend services by manipulating headers in preflight.
Header used in response to a preflight request to indicate which HTTP headers can be used when making the actual request :
content-type
access-control-allow-header
authorization
x-requested-with
and specify the "allow-origin" = localhost:4200 for example

One solution I have used in the past - lets say your site is on mydomain.com, and you need to make an ajax request to foreigndomain.com
Configure an IIS rewrite from your domain to the foreign domain - e.g.
<rewrite>
<rules>
<rule name="ForeignRewrite" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="^api/v1/(.*)$" />
<action type="Rewrite" url="https://foreigndomain.com/{R:1}" />
</rule>
</rules>
</rewrite>
on your mydomain.com site - you can then make a same origin request, and there's no need for any options request :)

It can be solved in case of use of a proxy that intercept the request and write the appropriate headers.
In the particular case of Varnish these would be the rules:
if (req.http.host == "CUSTOM_URL" ) {
set resp.http.Access-Control-Allow-Origin = "*";
if (req.method == "OPTIONS") {
set resp.http.Access-Control-Max-Age = "1728000";
set resp.http.Access-Control-Allow-Methods = "GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH, OPTIONS";
set resp.http.Access-Control-Allow-Headers = "Authorization,Content-Type,Accept,Origin,User-Agent,DNT,Cache-Control,X-Mx-ReqToken,Keep-Alive,X-Requested-With,If-Modified-Since";
set resp.http.Content-Length = "0";
set resp.http.Content-Type = "text/plain charset=UTF-8";
set resp.status = 204;
}
}

What worked for me was to import "github.com/gorilla/handlers" and then use it this way:
router := mux.NewRouter()
router.HandleFunc("/config", getConfig).Methods("GET")
router.HandleFunc("/config/emcServer", createEmcServers).Methods("POST")
headersOk := handlers.AllowedHeaders([]string{"X-Requested-With", "Content-Type"})
originsOk := handlers.AllowedOrigins([]string{"*"})
methodsOk := handlers.AllowedMethods([]string{"GET", "HEAD", "POST", "PUT", "OPTIONS"})
log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(":" + webServicePort, handlers.CORS(originsOk, headersOk, methodsOk)(router)))
As soon as I executed an Ajax POST request and attaching JSON data to it, Chrome would always add the Content-Type header which was not in my previous AllowedHeaders config.

jquery API CORS issue when specifying headers

I am calling an API from different domain, it doesn't have any authorization check for now but in future we are planning to do so. When I hit this API without any headers I get the response but when I set the headers the browser throws CORS error. the headers are appID, version and empID. "Access-Control-Allow-Origin" header is set on server side. I am using another API from another domain which works perfectly fine with and without headers. I think the issue is with content-type or data-type but I am clueless.I get the response in JSON format.

When you pass non-standard headers to an AJAX request, the client will send a pre-flight OPTIONS HTTP Request before attempting the real request.
Your server needs to be able to handle that request, and also return the required ACAO headers in response to it.

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.

CORS - How do 'preflight' an httprequest?

I am trying to make a cross domain HTTP request to WCF service (that I own). I have read several techniques for working with the cross domain scripting limitations. Because my service must accommodate both GET and POST requests I cannot implement some dynamic script tag whose src is the URL of a GET request. Since I am free to make changes at the server I have begun to try to implement a workaround that involves configuring the server responses to include the "Access-Control-Allow-Origin" header and 'preflight' requests with and OPTIONS request. I got the idea from this post : Getting CORS working
At the server side, my web method is adding 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *' to the HTTP response. I can see that responses do include this header now. My question is: How do I 'preflight' a request (OPTIONS)? I am using jQuery.getJSON to make the GET request but the browser cancels the request right away with the infamous:
Origin http://localhost is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin
Is anyone familiar with this CORS technique? What changes need to be made at the client to preflight my request?
Thanks!

During the preflight request, you should see the following two headers: Access-Control-Request-Method and Access-Control-Request-Headers. These request headers are asking the server for permissions to make the actual request. Your preflight response needs to acknowledge these headers in order for the actual request to work.
For example, suppose the browser makes a request with the following headers:
Origin: http://yourdomain.com
Access-Control-Request-Method: POST
Access-Control-Request-Headers: X-Custom-Header
Your server should then respond with the following headers:
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://yourdomain.com
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: X-Custom-Header
Pay special attention to the Access-Control-Allow-Headers response header. The value of this header should be the same headers in the Access-Control-Request-Headers request header, and it can not be '*'.
Once you send this response to the preflight request, the browser will make the actual request. You can learn more about CORS here: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/cors/

Although this thread dates back to 2014, the issue can still be current to many of us. Here is how I dealt with it in a jQuery 1.12 /PHP 5.6 context:
jQuery sent its XHR request using only limited headers; only 'Origin' was sent.
No preflight request was needed.
The server only had to detect such a request, and add the "Access-Control-Allow-Origin: " . $_SERVER['HTTP_ORIGIN'] header, after detecting that this was a cross-origin XHR.
PHP Code sample:
if (!empty($_SERVER['HTTP_ORIGIN'])) {
// Uh oh, this XHR comes from outer space...
// Use this opportunity to filter out referers that shouldn't be allowed to see this request
if (!preg_match('#\.partner\.domain\.net$#'))
die("End of the road if you're not my business partner.");
// otherwise oblige
header("Access-Control-Allow-Origin: " . $_SERVER['HTTP_ORIGIN']);
}
else {
// local request, no need to send a specific header for CORS
}
In particular, don't add an exit; as no preflight is needed.

Solve the CORS issue by writing your custom middleware in Node.js with these simple steps.
don't need to set anything from the client, just a little change on the Node.js server will fix the problem.
create a middleware:
// in middleware/corsResolver.js
function corsResolver(req, res, next) {
// Website you wish to allow to connect
// running front-end application on port 3000
res.setHeader('Access-Control-Allow-Origin', 'http://localhost:3000');
// Request methods you wish to allow
res.setHeader('Access-Control-Allow-Methods', 'GET, POST, OPTIONS, PUT, PATCH, DELETE');
// Request headers you wish to allow
res.setHeader('Access-Control-Allow-Headers', 'X-Requested-With,content-type,Authorization');
// Set to true if you need the website to include cookies in the requests sent
// to the API (e.g. in case you use sessions)
res.setHeader('Access-Control-Allow-Credentials', true);
// Pass to next layer of middleware
next();
}
module.exports = corsResolver;
now edit your server.js (index.js or any main file that starts your node server) and add this middleware:
// server.js or indes.js
const corsResolver = require('path/to/resolver-middleware')
app.use(corsResolver) // -----------> applied middleware here
// other stuff