CORS: Cannot use wildcard in Access-Control-Allow-Origin when credentials flag is true
I have a setup involving
Frontend server (Node.js, domain: localhost:3000) <---> Backend (Django, Ajax, domain: localhost:8000)
Browser <-- webapp <-- Node.js (Serve the app)
Browser (webapp) --> Ajax --> Django(Serve ajax POST requests)
Now, my problem here is with CORS setup which the webapp uses to make Ajax calls to the backend server. In chrome, I keep getting
Cannot use wildcard in Access-Control-Allow-Origin when credentials flag is true.
doesn't work on firefox either.
My Node.js setup is:
var allowCrossDomain = function(req, res, next) {
res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Origin', 'http://localhost:8000/');
res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Credentials', true);
res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Methods', 'GET,PUT,POST,DELETE');
res.header("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "Origin, X-Requested-With, Content-Type, Accept");
next();
};
And in Django I'm using this middleware along with this
The webapp makes requests as such:
$.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: 'http://localhost:8000/blah',
data: {},
xhrFields: {
withCredentials: true
},
crossDomain: true,
dataType: 'json',
success: successHandler
});
So, the request headers that the webapp sends looks like:
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: "Origin, X-Requested-With, Content-Type, Accept"
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: 'GET,PUT,POST,DELETE'
Content-Type: application/json
Accept: */*
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch
Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8
Cookie: csrftoken=***; sessionid="***"
And here's the response header:
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Content-Type,*
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: POST,GET,OPTIONS,PUT,DELETE
Content-Type: application/json
Where am I going wrong?!
Edit 1: I've been using chrome --disable-web-security
, but now want things to actually work.
Edit 2: Answer:
So, solution for me django-cors-headers
config:
CORS_ORIGIN_ALLOW_ALL = False
CORS_ALLOW_CREDENTIALS = True
CORS_ORIGIN_WHITELIST = (
'http://localhost:3000' # Here was the problem indeed and it has to be http://localhost:3000, not http://localhost:3000/
)
This is a part of security, you cannot do that. If you want to allow credentials then your Access-Control-Allow-Origin
must not use *
. You will have to specify the exact protocol + domain + port. For reference see these questions :
- Access-Control-Allow-Origin wildcard subdomains, ports and protocols
- Cross Origin Resource Sharing with Credentials
Besides *
is too permissive and would defeat use of credentials. So set http://localhost:3000
or http://localhost:8000
as the allow origin header.
If you are using CORS middleware and you want to send withCredential
boolean true, you can configure CORS like this:
var cors = require('cors');
app.use(cors({credentials: true, origin: 'http://localhost:3000'}));
Expanding on @Renaud idea, cors now provides a very easy way of doing this:
From cors official documentation found here:
" origin: Configures the Access-Control-Allow-Origin CORS header. Possible values: Boolean - set origin to true to reflect the request origin, as defined by req.header('Origin'), or set it to false to disable CORS. "
Hence we simply do the following:
const app = express();
const corsConfig = {
credentials: true,
origin: true,
};
app.use(cors(corsConfig));
Lastly I think it is worth mentioning that there are use cases where we would want to allow cross origin requests from anyone; for example, when building a public REST API.
NOTE: I would have liked to leave this as a comment on his answer, but unfortunately I don't have the reputation points.
If you are using express
you can use the cors package to allow CORS like so instead of writing your middleware;
var express = require('express')
, cors = require('cors')
, app = express();
app.use(cors());
app.get(function(req,res){
res.send('hello');
});