Rails Responds with 404 on CORS Preflight Options Request

Question

I'm creating a set of services using Rails 4, which I am consuming with a JavaScript browser application. Cross-origin GETS are working fine, but my POSTs are failing the preflight OPTIONS check with a 404 error. At least, I think that's what's happening. Here are the errors as they appear in the console. This is Chrome 31.0.1650.63 on a Mac.

OPTIONS http://localhost:3000/confessor_requests 404 (Not Found) jquery-1.10.2.js:8706
OPTIONS http://localhost:3000/confessor_requests No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. Origin 'http://localhost' is therefore not allowed access. jquery-1.10.2.js:8706
XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://localhost:3000/confessor_requests. No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. Origin 'http://localhost' is therefore not allowed access. main.html:1

I've searched high and low for instructions on enabling CORS, and I'm stumped. The usual recommendation seems to be to put something like this in the Application controller, which I did.

before_filter :cors_preflight_check
after_filter :cors_set_access_control_headers

def cors_set_access_control_headers
  headers['Access-Control-Allow-Origin'] = '*'
  headers['Access-Control-Allow-Methods'] = 'POST, PUT, GET, OPTIONS'
  headers['Access-Control-Allow-Headers'] = '*'
  headers['Access-Control-Max-Age'] = "1728000"
end

def cors_preflight_check
  if request.method == :options
    headers['Access-Control-Allow-Origin'] = '*'
    headers['Access-Control-Allow-Methods'] = 'POST, PUT, GET, OPTIONS'
    headers['Access-Control-Allow-Headers'] = '*'
    headers['Access-Control-Max-Age'] = '1728000'
    render :text => '', :content_type => 'text/plain'
  end
end

Followed by some kind of route in routes.rb that will redirect to this action when an OPTIONS request comes in.

match "/*all" => "application#cors_preflight_check", :constraints => { :method => "OPTIONS" }

The 'match' directive no longer works in Rails 4, so I fiddled with it, attempting to make it match POSTS directly, like this:

post "/*all" => "application#cors_preflight_check", :constraints => { :method => :options }

But it still doesn't work. Since the GET requests are working, I'm assuming that what I'm missing is the correct route for the OPTIONS request. However, I've tried every route I can think of, and nothing seems to let the request through.

I also tried installing cyu/rack-cors, and this gives the same result.

Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

Here's a solution with the rack-cors gem, which you said you tried. As others have mentioned, you didn't give much detail in regards to which front-end framework you're using and what the actual request looks like. So the following may not apply to you, but I hope it helps someone.

In my case, the gem worked fine until I used PUT (or PATCH or DELETE).

If you look in your browser developer console, look at the request headers, and you should have a line like this:

Access-Control-Request-Method: PUT

The important thing to note is that the methods you pass to resource are for the Access-Control-Request-Method, not the Request Method that is to come after the pre-flight check.

Note how I have :methods => [:get, :post, :options, :delete, :put, :patch] that will include all the methods I care about.

Thus your entire config section should look something like this, for development.rb:

# This handles cross-origin resource sharing.
# See: https://github.com/cyu/rack-cors
config.middleware.insert_before 0, "Rack::Cors" do
  allow do
    # In development, we don't care about the origin.
    origins '*'
    # Reminder: On the following line, the 'methods' refer to the 'Access-
    # Control-Request-Method', not the normal Request Method.
    resource '*', :headers => :any, :methods => [:get, :post, :options, :delete, :put, :patch], credentials: true
  end
end