Harvard Extension School, Fall 2018
CSCI E-12 Fundamentals of Web Site Development

## Same Origin Policy

This is the simplest policy, and will cover all cases where the data you are requesting comes from the same hostname as the page making the request.

Under the same origin policy, a web browser will permit JavaScript contained in a web page to access data from the same origin -- or the same "hostname" of the URL.

So if your JavaScript and the data it is accessing all come from the same origin (hostname in the URL), the browser will permit this communication.

If the JavaScript and the data come from different origins (hostnames), then the browser will block this for security reasons.

For JavaScript to access data that comes from different origins, two techniques can be used: CORS and JSONP.

Copyright © David Heitmeyer