Jquery $.ajax fails in IE on cross domain calls

Solution 1:

For IE8 & IE9 you need to use XDomainRequest (XDR). If you look below you'll see it's in a sort of similar formatting as $.ajax. As far as my research has got me I can't get this cross-domain working in IE6 & 7 (still looking for a work-around for this). XDR first came out in IE8 (it's in IE9 also). So basically first, I test for 6/7 and do no AJAX.

IE10+ is able to do cross-domain normally like all the other browsers (congrats Microsoft... sigh)

After that the else if tests for 'XDomainRequest in window (apparently better than browser sniffing) and does the JSON AJAX request that way, other wise the ELSE does it normally with $.ajax.

Hope this helps!! Took me forever to get this all figured out originally

Information on the XDomainRequest object

// call with your url (with parameters) 
// 2nd param is your callback function (which will be passed the json DATA back)

crossDomainAjax('http://www.somecrossdomaincall.com/?blah=123', function (data) {
    // success logic
});

function crossDomainAjax (url, successCallback) {

    // IE8 & 9 only Cross domain JSON GET request
    if ('XDomainRequest' in window && window.XDomainRequest !== null) {

        var xdr = new XDomainRequest(); // Use Microsoft XDR
        xdr.open('get', url);
        xdr.onload = function () {
            var dom  = new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLDOM'),
                JSON = $.parseJSON(xdr.responseText);

            dom.async = false;

            if (JSON == null || typeof (JSON) == 'undefined') {
                JSON = $.parseJSON(data.firstChild.textContent);
            }

            successCallback(JSON); // internal function
        };

        xdr.onerror = function() {
            _result = false;  
        };

        xdr.send();
    } 

    // IE7 and lower can't do cross domain
    else if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('MSIE') != -1 &&
             parseInt(navigator.userAgent.match(/MSIE ([\d.]+)/)[1], 10) < 8) {
       return false;
    }    

    // Do normal jQuery AJAX for everything else          
    else {
        $.ajax({
            url: url,
            cache: false,
            dataType: 'json',
            type: 'GET',
            async: false, // must be set to false
            success: function (data, success) {
                successCallback(data);
            }
        });
    }
}

Solution 2:

Could you check if the problem with IE relies on not defining security zones to allow cross domain requests? See this microsoft page for an explanation.

OTOH, this page mentions that IE7 and eariler cannot do cross domain calls, but IE8 can, using a different object than XMLHttpRequest, the one JQuery uses. Could you check if XDomainRequest works?

EDIT (2013-08-22)

The second link is dead, so I'm writing here some of its information, taken from the wayback machine:

XDomainRequest Supported: IE8

Rather than implement the CORS version of XMLHttpRequest, the IE team have gone with there own propriety object, named XDomainRequest. The usage of XDomainRequest has been simplified from XMLHttpRequest, by having more events thrown (with onload perhaps being the most important).

This implementation has a few limitations attached to it. For example, cookies are not sent when using this object, which can be a headache for cookie based sessions on the server side. Also, ContentType can not be set, which poses a problem in ASP.NET and possibly other server side languages (see http://www.actionmonitor.co.uk/NewsItem.aspx?id=5).

var xdr = new XDomainRequest();
xdr.onload = function() { alert("READY"); };
xdr.open("GET", "script.html");
xdr.send();

Solution 3:

Jquery does this for you, only thing is to set $.support.cors = true; Then cross domain request works fine in all browsers for jquery users.

Solution 4:

Simply install this jQuery Plugin: jQuery Cross-Domain AJAX for IE8

This 1.4kb plugin works right away in Internet Explorer 8 and 9.

Include the plugin after jQuery, and call your ajax request as normal. Nothing else required.

• Plugin GitHub repo and install instructions