229

How do I set the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header so I can use web-fonts from my subdomain on my main domain?


Notes:

You'll find examples of this and other headers for most HTTP servers in the HTML5BP Server Configs projects https://github.com/h5bp/server-configs

Chris McKee
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8 Answers8

245

Nginx has to be compiled with http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpHeadersModule (default on Ubuntu and some other Linux distros). Then you can do this

location ~* \.(eot|ttf|woff|woff2)$ {
    add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
}
hellvinz
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65

wildcard cors

A more up-to-date answer:

#
# Wide-open CORS config for nginx
#
location / {
     if ($request_method = 'OPTIONS') {
        add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*';
        #
        # Om nom nom cookies
        #
        add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials' 'true';
        add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Methods' 'GET, POST, OPTIONS';
        #
        # Custom headers and headers various browsers *should* be OK with but aren't
        #
        add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Headers' 'DNT,X-CustomHeader,Keep-Alive,User-Agent,X-Requested-With,If-Modified-Since,Cache-Control,Content-Type';
        #
        # Tell client that this pre-flight info is valid for 20 days
        #
        add_header 'Access-Control-Max-Age' 1728000;
        add_header 'Content-Type' 'text/plain charset=UTF-8';
        add_header 'Content-Length' 0;
        return 204;
     }
     if ($request_method = 'POST') {
        add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*';
        add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials' 'true';
        add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Methods' 'GET, POST, OPTIONS';
        add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Headers' 'DNT,X-CustomHeader,Keep-Alive,User-Agent,X-Requested-With,If-Modified-Since,Cache-Control,Content-Type';
     }
     if ($request_method = 'GET') {
        add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*';
        add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials' 'true';
        add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Methods' 'GET, POST, OPTIONS';
        add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Headers' 'DNT,X-CustomHeader,Keep-Alive,User-Agent,X-Requested-With,If-Modified-Since,Cache-Control,Content-Type';
     }
}

source: https://michielkalkman.com/snippets/nginx-cors-open-configuration.html

You may also wish to add Access-Control-Expose-Headers (in the same format as Access-Control-Allow-Headers) in order to expose your custom and/or 'non-simple' headers to ajax requests.

Access-Control-Expose-Headers (optional) - The XMLHttpRequest 2 object has a 
getResponseHeader() method that returns the value of a particular response 
header. During a CORS request, the getResponseHeader() method can only access 
simple response headers. Simple response headers are defined as follows:
    
    Cache-Control
    Content-Language
    Content-Type
    Expires
    Last-Modified
    Pragma
 If you want clients to be able to access other headers, you have to use the
 Access-Control-Expose-Headers header. The value of this header is a comma-
 delimited list of response headers you want to expose to the client.

-http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/cors/

Configs for other web servers http://enable-cors.org/server.html


Access-Control-Allow-Credentials

If you're using Access-Control-Allow-Credentials with your CORS request you'll want the cors header wiring within your location to resemble this. As the origin has to match the client domain, wildcard doesn't work.

        if ($http_origin = ''){
            set $http_origin "*";
        }

        proxy_hide_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin;
        add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin $http_origin;
Chris McKee
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    Any way to not have to repeat these lines for every location? Can we put it under the server {} block? – geoyws Oct 11 '15 at 05:05
  • @geoyws (without the @ I didnt get a notification); you could put it above location, thats fine :) – Chris McKee Dec 17 '15 at 15:12
  • access-control-expose-headers is missing here – chovy Dec 23 '15 at 19:45
  • @chovy its an optional header to expose non defaults to ajax requests but I can see it tripping people up so duly added. Ta – Chris McKee Jan 04 '16 at 10:13
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    Please avoid using `if` in nginx - [even the official manual discourages it](https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/start/topics/depth/ifisevil/). – aggregate1166877 May 22 '18 at 10:43
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    I would like to add that it is useful to add `always` option to all `add_header` so that headers are added also for non-200 responses. Since nginx 1.7.5: https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_headers_module.html – Mitar Feb 27 '19 at 18:48
  • I'm not sure wildcard (*) ACAO header will work with Access-Control-Allow-Credentials set. – adamczi Jan 05 '21 at 10:56
  • @adamczi It will not work. For credentials to work, origin need to be exact origin sent in CORS request. https://fetch.spec.whatwg.org/#http-cors-protocol – piotrekkr Jul 26 '21 at 07:21
  • @ChrisMcKee this is best answer ever. Just add all headers via nginx. Thank you very much! – Kusko Andrew May 20 '22 at 22:08
33

Here is the article that I wrote which avoids some of the duplication for GET|POST. It should get you going with CORS in Nginx.

nginx access control allow origin

Here is the sample snippet from the post:

server {
  listen        80;
  server_name   api.test.com;


  location / {

    # Simple requests
    if ($request_method ~* "(GET|POST)") {
      add_header "Access-Control-Allow-Origin"  *;
    }

    # Preflighted requests
    if ($request_method = OPTIONS ) {
      add_header "Access-Control-Allow-Origin"  *;
      add_header "Access-Control-Allow-Methods" "GET, POST, OPTIONS, HEAD";
      add_header "Access-Control-Allow-Headers" "Authorization, Origin, X-Requested-With, Content-Type, Accept";
      return 200;
    }

    ....
    # Handle request
    ....
  }
}
gansbrest
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    As per SF policy you need to copy the information into the post, not just link to it. Websites can disappear at any time, which would be loss of information. – Tim Apr 17 '17 at 22:07
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    Valid point @tim, updated to include the code – gansbrest Apr 17 '17 at 22:58
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    Consider using status code `204 No content` as it seems more appropriate. – Slava Fomin II Jan 21 '19 at 11:00
  • `Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *` does not work with `Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true` because for credentials to work origin must be exactly the same as sent in CORS request (not `*`). See https://fetch.spec.whatwg.org/#http-cors-protocol – piotrekkr Jul 26 '21 at 07:18
  • @piotrekkr you're looking for ``` if ($http_origin = ''){ set $http_origin "*"; } proxy_hide_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin; add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin $http_origin; ``` in order to do that. https://gist.github.com/ChrisMcKee/f0816222acf0692526d01a7e82b6651d – Chris McKee Jul 27 '21 at 08:51
  • @ChrisMcKee I'm using `add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin $http_origin` to achieve that. If `$http_origin` is empty then no header will be sent. – piotrekkr Jul 27 '21 at 10:04
  • @piotrekkr yeah depends on your needs; I added to my answer the formatted version; which is instead of nothing you get a wildcard for other requests (helpful for variable response i.e. html widgets and json responses from one endpoint) – Chris McKee Jul 27 '21 at 16:06
  • It does not work – Darius.V Aug 30 '21 at 07:09
20

In some cases you need to use add_header directives with always to cover all HTTP response codes.

location / {
    add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*' always;
}

From documentation:

If the always parameter is specified (1.7.5), the header field will be added regardless of the response code.

Adds the specified field to a response header provided that the response code equals 200, 201 (1.3.10), 204, 206, 301, 302, 303, 304, 307 (1.1.16, 1.0.13), or 308 (1.13.0). Parameter value can contain variables.

laimison
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  • This fixed it for me. 404 caused the header to not be added, which then caused a client's agent to behave strangely. – Climax Aug 06 '21 at 15:07
  • This work out for me but I needed to add ```proxy_hide_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin;``` before ```add_header ...```. I used [https://cors-test.codehappy.dev/](https://cors-test.codehappy.dev/) to debug it. – Nico Serrano Jul 01 '22 at 16:01
11

Firstly, let me say that @hellvinz answer is working for me:

location ~* \.(eot|ttf|woff|woff2)$ {
    add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
}

However, I have decided to answer this question with a separate answer as I only managed to get this solution working after putting in about ten more hours looking for a solution.

It seems that Nginx doesn't define any (correct) font MIME types by default. By following this tuorial I found I could add the following:

application/x-font-ttf           ttc ttf;
application/x-font-otf           otf;
application/font-woff            woff;
application/font-woff2           woff2;
application/vnd.ms-fontobject    eot;

To my etc/nginx/mime.types file. As stated, the above solution then worked.

Matthew Read
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DazBaldwin
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    I'd usually point people to check the mime type file on H5BP https://github.com/h5bp/server-configs-nginx/blob/master/mime.types :) – Chris McKee Jan 11 '17 at 17:06
  • this didnt fix my issue. I did the change in mime.type file and also in the nginx.conf file inside /etc/nginx – Suraj Jeswara Jul 08 '20 at 04:56
9

Nginx's traditional add_header directive doesn't work with 4xx responses. As we still want to add custom headers to them, we need to install the ngx_headers_more module to be able to use the more_set_headers directive, which also works with 4xx responses.

sudo apt-get install nginx-extras

Then use more_set_headers in the nginx.conf file, i have pasted my sample below

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example-site.com;
    root "/home/vagrant/projects/example-site/public";

    index index.html index.htm index.php;

    charset utf-8;

    more_set_headers 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin: $http_origin';
    more_set_headers 'Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST, OPTIONS, PUT, DELETE, HEAD';
    more_set_headers 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true';
    more_set_headers 'Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Origin,Content-Type,Accept,Authorization';

    location / {
        if ($request_method = 'OPTIONS') {
            more_set_headers 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin: $http_origin';
            more_set_headers 'Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST, OPTIONS, PUT, DELETE, HEAD';
            more_set_headers 'Access-Control-Max-Age: 1728000';
            more_set_headers 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true';
            more_set_headers 'Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Origin,Content-Type,Accept,Authorization';
            more_set_headers 'Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8';
            more_set_headers 'Content-Length: 0';
            return 204;
        }
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
    location = /robots.txt  { access_log off; log_not_found off; }

    access_log off;
    error_log  /var/log/nginx/example-site.com-error.log error;

    sendfile off;

    client_max_body_size 100m;

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_intercept_errors off;
        fastcgi_buffer_size 16k;
        fastcgi_buffers 4 16k;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }
}
Hasnat Safder
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0

In my case adding the Access Control with a wildcard header didn't work. I ended up having to set the proxy header with my web apps host and Access Control header with the origin set. Here's an example that worked for me:

location /service {
    proxy_pass http://graphql-server:8080;
    proxy_set_header Origin http://graphql-server:8080;
    proxy_hide_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin;
    add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin "$http_origin" always;
}
0

In my case, using Rails 5, the only working solution has been adding the rack-cors gem. Like so:

in /Gemfile

# Gemfile
gem 'rack-cors'

in config/initializers/cors.rb

# config/initializers/cors.rb
Rails.application.config.middleware.insert_before 0, Rack::Cors do
  allow do
    origins 'localhost:4200'
    resource '*',
      headers: :any,
      methods: %i(get post put patch delete options head)
  end
end

source: https://til.hashrocket.com/posts/4d7f12b213-rails-5-api-and-cors

user9869932
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  • how does that help nginx serve static files? – Walf Oct 03 '18 at 04:52
  • I was using nginx as a reverse proxy to serve the rails 5 app. This is a particular case where the CORS restriction was not coming from nginx but from the origin Rails App behind it. – user9869932 Oct 03 '18 at 10:39