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

## CORS - Cross Origin Resource Sharing

CORS is a common and preferred method for handling cross-origin requests.

Using CORS, it is possible for the browser and server to determine whether or not to allow a cross-origin request. This happens as part of the HTTP request. The server can specify access control rules, which a browser will then use to determine whether a cross-origin request is permitted.

We won't go into how make the server-side CORS compatible right now. From the front-end perspective, it is enough to understand that you are using a CORS-enabled service. You don't need to do anything to enable CORS from within your JavaScript -- it already is there and is used by the browser.

For example, the service from "cdn.rawgit.com" (e.g. apples.json) uses CORS, which is why the "Pick Your Own Apples" example worked fine, despite the different origins between the page the JSON.

Copyright © David Heitmeyer