Response to preflight request doesn't pass access control check

Question

I\'m getting this error using ngResource to call a REST API on Amazon Web Services:

XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://server.apiurl.com:8000/s/login

Answer 1

There are some caveats when it comes to CORS. First, it does not allow wildcards * but don't hold me on this one I've read it somewhere and I can't find the article now.

If you are making requests from a different domain you need to add the allow origin headers.

 Access-Control-Allow-Origin: www.other.com 

If you are making requests that affect server resources like POST/PUT/PATCH, and if the mime type is different than the following application/x-www-form-urlencoded, multipart/form-data, or text/plain the browser will automatically make a pre-flight OPTIONS request to check with the server if it would allow it.

So your API/server needs to handle these OPTIONS requests accordingly, you need to respond with the appropriate access control headers and the http response status code needs to be 200.

The headers should be something like this, adjust them for your needs:

   Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, POST, DELETE, OPTIONS
   Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Content-Type
   Access-Control-Max-Age: 86400

The max-age header is important, in my case, it wouldn't work without it, I guess the browser needs the info for how long the "access rights" are valid.

In addition, if you are making e.g. a POST request with application/json mime from a different domain you also need to add the previously mentioned allow origin header, so it would look like this:

   Access-Control-Allow-Origin: www.other.com 
   Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, POST, DELETE, OPTIONS
   Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Content-Type
   Access-Control-Max-Age: 86400

When the pre-flight succeeds and gets all the needed info your actual request will be made.

Generally speaking, whatever Access-Control headers are requested in the initial or pre-flight request, should be given in the response in order for it to work.

There is a good example in the MDN docs here on this link, and you should also check out this SO post