XMLHttpRequest cannot load an URL with jQuery

Question

I'm trying to get some json data from a "remote" website. I run my web service on the 99000 port then, I launch my website on the 99001 port (http://localhost:99001/index.html).

I get the following message:

    XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://localhost:99000/Services.svc/ReturnPersons. Origin http://localhost:99001 is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin.

Even If I launch my web page as an HTML file, I get this:

    XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://localhost:99000/Services.svc/ReturnPersons.Origin null is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin.

The web service returns data. I try to catch the data items like this:

var url = "http://localhost:99000/Services.svc/ReturnPersons";
$.getJSON(url, function (data) {
success: readData(data)
});
function readData(data) {
    alert(data[0].FirstName);
}

And I'm trying to get this structure:

[{"FirstName":"Foo","LastName":"Bar"},{"Hello":"Foo","LastName":"World"}]

Do you know why I'm getting this error?

Latchstring

Answer 1

You can't do a XMLHttpRequest crossdomain, the only "option" would be a technique called JSONP, which comes down to this:

To start request: Add a new <script> tag with the remote url, and then make sure that remote url returns a valid javascript file that calls your callback function. Some services support this (and let you name your callback in a GET parameters).

The other easy way out, would be to create a "proxy" on your local server, which gets the remote request and then just "forwards" it back to your javascript.

edit/addition:

I see jQuery has built-in support for JSONP, by checking if the URL contains "callback=?" (where jQuery will replace ? with the actual callback method). But you'd still need to process that on the remote server to generate a valid response.

Vickers

I solved the problem by adding the "&callback=?" to the URL. Thank you! – Latchstring

Do I have to specify/implement anything in the server script on the remote server? – Soonsooner

Yes, where your server normally returns a JSON string, e.g. {"foo": "bar"} you need to wrap the json string in a callback method (javascript function) that handles the json response. e.g. myFunction({"foo": "bar"}); – Vickers

Charles Leaf, actually you are wrong. There is another "option" which is called CORS. Checkout how to enable it here: enable-cors.org – Toque

You are right portforwardpodcast, but when this question was originally asked in 2010 CORS was a less popular choice (to be fair: one that I had never heard of back then) and while IE6 support has been dropped by most, there is still a demand to support IE7 which doesn't support CORS and IE8 only supports it partially. So depending on your requirements this is a very valid (and better) option yes. – Vickers

Answer 2

In new jQuery 1.5 you can use:

$.ajax({
    type: "GET",
    url: "http://localhost:99000/Services.svc/ReturnPersons",
    dataType: "jsonp",
    success: readData(data),
    error: function (xhr, ajaxOptions, thrownError) {
      alert(xhr.status);
      alert(thrownError);
    }
})

Architecture

i'm, guessing it's extra ":" in your response. could you paste whole message ? – Rihana

Answer 3

Fiddle with 3 working solutions in action.

Given an external JSON:

myurl = 'http://wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbgetentities&sites=frwiki&titles=France&languages=zh-hans|zh-hant|fr&props=sitelinks|labels|aliases|descriptions&format=json'

Solution 1: $.ajax() + jsonp:

$.ajax({
  dataType: "jsonp",
  url: myurl ,
  }).done(function ( data ) {
  // do my stuff
});

Solution 2: $.ajax()+json+&calback=?:

$.ajax({
  dataType: "json",
  url: myurl + '&callback=?',
  }).done(function ( data ) {
  // do my stuff
});

Solution 3: $.getJSON()+calback=?:

$.getJSON( myurl + '&callback=?', function(data) {
  // do my stuff
});

Documentations: http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.ajax/ , http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.getJSON/

Monasticism

JSfiddle fixed following #wikidata API changes, jsfiddle improvement done, redaction improvement done ! – Monasticism

@TuhinPaul: when you are on https fiddle you cannot request http wikidata or others http, it would be a security breach. You can do http-http, https-https, or http-https, not https-http. This is a security feature, not a cross domain issue. – Monasticism

Answer 4

Found a possible workaround that I don't believe was mentioned.

Here is a good description of the problem: http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/security/enabling-cross-origin-requests-in-web-api

Basically as long as you use forms/url-encoded/plain text content types you are fine.

$.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    headers: {
        'Accept': 'application/json',
        'Content-Type': 'text/plain'
    },
    dataType: "json",
    url: "http://localhost/endpoint",
    data: JSON.stringify({'DataToPost': 123}),
    success: function (data) {
        alert(JSON.stringify(data));
    }
});     

I use it with ASP.NET WebAPI2. So on the other end:

public static void RegisterWebApi(HttpConfiguration config)
{
    config.MapHttpAttributeRoutes();

    config.Formatters.Clear();
    config.Formatters.Add(new JsonMediaTypeFormatter());

    config.Formatters.JsonFormatter.SupportedMediaTypes.Add(new MediaTypeHeaderValue("text/plain"));
}

This way Json formatter gets used when parsing plain text content type.

And don't forget in Web.config:

<system.webServer>
<httpProtocol>
  <customHeaders>
    <add name="Access-Control-Allow-Origin" value="*" />
    <add name="Access-Control-Allow-Methods" value="GET, POST" />
  </customHeaders>
</httpProtocol>    

Hope this helps.

Woehick

Answer 5

I am using WebAPI 3 and was facing the same issue. The issue has resolve as @Rytis added his solution. And I think in WebAPI 3, we don't need to define method RegisterWebApi.

My change was only in web.config file and is working.

<httpProtocol>
 <customHeaders>
 <add name="Access-Control-Allow-Origin" value="*" />
 <add name="Access-Control-Allow-Methods" value="GET, POST" />
</customHeaders>
</httpProtocol> 

Thanks for you solution @Rytis!

Westward