Sounds like the recommended way to do it is to have your server read the Origin header from the client, compare that to the list of domains you would like to allow, and if it matches, echo the value of the Origin
header back to the client as the Access-Control-Allow-Origin
header in the response.
With .htaccess
you can do it like this:
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Allow loading of external fonts
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
<FilesMatch "\.(ttf|otf|eot|woff|woff2)$">
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
SetEnvIf Origin "http(s)?://(www\.)?(google.com|staging.google.com|development.google.com|otherdomain.example|dev02.otherdomain.example)$" AccessControlAllowOrigin=$0
Header add Access-Control-Allow-Origin %{AccessControlAllowOrigin}e env=AccessControlAllowOrigin
Header merge Vary Origin
</IfModule>
</FilesMatch>
Access-Control-Allow-Origin
is a CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) header.
When Site A tries to fetch content from Site B, Site B can send an Access-Control-Allow-Origin
response header to tell the browser that the content of this page is accessible to certain origins. (An origin is a domain, plus a scheme and port number.) By default, Site B's pages are not accessible to any other origin; using the Access-Control-Allow-Origin
header opens a door for cross-origin access by specific requesting origins.
For each resource/page that Site B wants to make accessible to Site A, Site B should serve its pages with the response header:
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://siteA.com
Modern browsers will not block cross-domain requests outright. If Site A requests a page from Site B, the browser will actually fetch the requested page on the network level and check if the response headers list Site A as a permitted requester domain. If Site B has not indicated that Site A is allowed to access this page, the browser will trigger the XMLHttpRequest
's error
event and deny the response data to the requesting JavaScript code.
Non-simple requests
What happens on the network level can be slightly more complex than explained above. If the request is a "non-simple" request, the browser first sends a data-less "preflight" OPTIONS request, to verify that the server will accept the request. A request is non-simple when either (or both):
- using an HTTP verb other than GET or POST (e.g. PUT, DELETE)
- using non-simple request headers; the only simple requests headers are:
Accept
Accept-Language
Content-Language
Content-Type
(this is only simple when its value is application/x-www-form-urlencoded
, multipart/form-data
, or text/plain
)
If the server responds to the OPTIONS preflight with appropriate response headers (Access-Control-Allow-Headers
for non-simple headers, Access-Control-Allow-Methods
for non-simple verbs) that match the non-simple verb and/or non-simple headers, then the browser sends the actual request.
Supposing that Site A wants to send a PUT request for /somePage
, with a non-simple Content-Type
value of application/json
, the browser would first send a preflight request:
OPTIONS /somePage HTTP/1.1
Origin: http://siteA.com
Access-Control-Request-Method: PUT
Access-Control-Request-Headers: Content-Type
Note that Access-Control-Request-Method
and Access-Control-Request-Headers
are added by the browser automatically; you do not need to add them. This OPTIONS preflight gets the successful response headers:
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://siteA.com
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST, PUT
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Content-Type
When sending the actual request (after preflight is done), the behavior is identical to how a simple request is handled. In other words, a non-simple request whose preflight is successful is treated the same as a simple request (i.e., the server must still send Access-Control-Allow-Origin
again for the actual response).
The browsers sends the actual request:
PUT /somePage HTTP/1.1
Origin: http://siteA.com
Content-Type: application/json
{ "myRequestContent": "JSON is so great" }
And the server sends back an Access-Control-Allow-Origin
, just as it would for a simple request:
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://siteA.com
See Understanding XMLHttpRequest over CORS for a little more information about non-simple requests.
Best Answer
You are running into CORS issues.
There are several ways to fix/workaround this.
More verbosely, you are trying to access api.serverurl.com from localhost. This is the exact definition of cross domain request.
By either turning it off just to get your work done (OK, but poor security for you if you visit other sites and just kicks the can down the road) you can use a proxy which makes your browser think all requests come from local host when really you have local server that then calls the remote server.
so api.serverurl.com might become localhost:8000/api and your local nginx or other proxy will send to the correct destination.
Now by popular demand, 100% more CORS info....same great taste!
Bypassing CORS is exactly what is shown for those simply learning the front end. https://codecraft.tv/courses/angular/http/http-with-promises/