Wide-open CORS config for nginx

cors-nginx.conf

#
# 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-Mx-ReqToken,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-Mx-ReqToken,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-Mx-ReqToken,Keep-Alive,User-Agent,X-Requested-With,If-Modified-Since,Cache-Control,Content-Type';

     }

}

This doesn't seem to work for me ... I'm uisng nginx/1.0.5. For testing I replaced http://10.140.10.40 with *.

Thanks a lot. This saved my day :)

good example for config options

If only I could see this before wasting 5 hours of time... Thanks a lot for saving the rest of my day! :)

For me I hade to return 204 otherwise the browser would hang and then timeout on the option request:
add_header 'Access-Control-Max-Age' 1728000;
add_header 'Content-Type' 'text/plain charset=UTF-8';
add_header 'Content-Length' 0;

    return 204;
 }

Updated with 204 return for OPTIONS (mrdevin) and wildcard '*' for Access-Control-Allow-Origin (epicserve).

I've updated this in https://gist.github.com/4165271 to add a poor man's whitelist. I'm not really sure where having Access-Control-Allow-Origin as wildcard would cause too many issues, but some people may be extra conscious. We use a simple-ish regexp to match valid URLs. Please note that I haven't load tested this, so I don't know what kind of effect it'll have.

Thanks for this. I use:

add_header "Access-Control-Allow-Origin" $http_origin;

FWIW HTTP/1.1 RFC says response from OPTIONS is not cacheable. Doesn't that mean a browser must ignore your Access-Control-Max-Age header?

Thanks a lot!

From MDN:

Important note: when responding to a credentialed request, server must specify a domain, and cannot use wild carding.

I've confirmed that at least Firefox will block a request with cookies if the Access-Control-Allow-Origin is set to '*'.

This does not work for me

location / {
             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-Mx-ReqToken,Keep-Alive,User-Agent,X-Requested-With,If-Modified-Since,Cache-Control,Content-Type';

        root   share/nginx/html;
        proxy_pass         https://dddd.dd.com;
        proxy_set_header   Host dddd.dd.com;  

    }

You cannot use a wildcard Access-Control-Allow-Origin if you want to use xhrFields: {withCredentials:true} to send cookies/basicauth. In that case you must use the exact origin:

add_header "Access-Control-Allow-Origin" $http_origin;

When starting to use this Chrome will cache the earlier (CORS failed) requests. Reset the cache to get things working!

Place this in nginx.conf or server blocks?

As stated in the docs add_header does not have any effect on 4xx and 5xx responses.

So save the two hours I just wasted and add always to your add_header (works with nginx 1.7.5+).

By adding this CORS block to my nginx config I now see my initial OPTIONS request followed by an identical GET request (incorrect duplicate) - Any idea what could be causing this?

https://gist.github.com/brupm/1b2c69cbf8f9612ee304

I suspect it's the return 204 line.

There is a better page http://enable-cors.org/server.html

If you use a cache server, you must add a Vary: Origin to the response.

add_header "Access-Control-Allow-Origin" $http_origin;
add_header "Vary" "Origin";

where do i put them?

for anybody on ubuntu first install
sudo apt-get install nginx-extras
and then
more_set_headers 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *';
more_set_headers 'Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST, OPTIONS';
more_set_headers 'Access-Control-Allow-Headers: DNT,X-CustomHeader,Keep-Alive,User-Agent,X-Requested-With,If-Modified-Since,Cache-Control,Content-Type';

turn all add_header into more_set_headers
and it will work ;)

On add_header, if your server will intentionally throw status code other than 200, 201, 204, 206, 301, 302, 303, 304, or 307 (Ex. 400 or 422) you should add always on each line

So instead of

add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*';
add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials' 'true';

Use

add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*' always;
add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials' 'true' always;

Source

When I add

add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*' always;
add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials' 'true' always;

I get:
nginx: [emerg] invalid number of arguments in "add_header" directive in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/foobar:12
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test failed

Any idea?

@maxim25, Are you sure that your nginx is 1.7.5 or newer?

If 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials' is set "TRUE"
the wildcard (*) in the Allow-Origin dont work!

Thanks.
It is so useful and helpful for me.

Line 28

add_header 'Content-Type' 'text/plain charset=UTF-8';

It seems the semicolon is missing, maybe ' text/plain; charset=UTF-8' is more standard

In case you want to use the wildcard origin where possible but also allow credentials if the origin was sent along use following:

set $acac true;
if ($http_origin = ''){
    set $acac false;
    set $http_origin "*";
 }
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin $http_origin;
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Credentials $acac;

why do you specify content-type related headers if no body for 204 response?
https://gist.github.com/michiel/1064640#file-cors-nginx-conf-L28-L29

Here is shorter version of access control allow origin for Nginx that should get you started.

I having problem in this code This giving me error.

I have put this code in location inside /site-enabled/ but its still giving error on http://defaultwallpaper.com Please help.

syntax error. missing closing ' in checking OPTIONS. 'Content-Length should be 'Content-Length'
add_header 'Content-Length 0;

Thanks for the snippet but
Line 15 missing ' , fyi
https://gist.github.com/michiel/1064640/858268f0ddb4bd2f9ccbc416e391a4de4844645a#file-cors-nginx-conf-L15

set $cors_origin "https://your.domain";

if ($http_origin ~* ^(https?://[\w\.\-]+(:\d+)?)/?.*?$  ) {
	set $cors_origin $1;
}
	
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin $cors_origin always;
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Credentials true;
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Methods 'GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, OPTIONS' always;
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Headers 'Accept,Authorization,Cache-Control,Content-Type,DNT,If-Modified-Since,Keep-Alive,Origin,User-Agent,X-Requested-With' always;

• Access-Control-Allow-Methods/Access-Control-Allow-Headers use what you prefer.
• this way (as all ways with http_origin) required Origin header to be sent to server.
• if no Origin or trash values - it will use default (the hardcoded value https://your.domain)

set $cors_origin "https://your.domain";

If you want a wild card domain, I'd set the default to that. The problem is, the origin header isn't always set from what I'm seeing. Vary seems to fix that.

The always directive just means use it for any status code.

That can be some confusion as not everyone who wants "withCredentials" actually wants anything to do with credentials so the security concern goes poof.

There's another option not included of also falling back to the referrer. It's really hard to find out how if actually works in nginx. Nginx configuration doesn't appear to make use of an ordered map or ordered list and the most prevalent documentation on the matter is confusing.

Once you need to go into if space, you might find yourself really wanting a module for this. If the sample you posted goes into something with another if statement then it can be wiped out if another if matches.

My instinct for security also tells me that you might want to validate the origin header though I have to wonder how far to really go with this. Can the user inject anything malicious? If they try to inject a new line then they'll just be sending another header rather than injecting a response header. I suppose the only thing they might do with something reflecting what's sent is try to exploit some client header handling exploit which seems a bit far fetched (and the use of . doesn't do much to prevent that).

if ($http_origin ~* ^(https?://[\w\.\-]+(:\d+)?)/?.*?$ ) { isn't even valid nginx syntax. I don't know what regex it's supporting but it looks like it's bailing on valid perl/pcre regex for this line.

I'm facing the following error message. Any idea how to solve it please?

Access to XMLHttpRequest at 'https://localhost:8080/sockjs-node/info?t=1558864429094' from origin 'https://localhost' has been blocked by CORS policy: The value of the 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header in the response must not be the wildcard '*' when the request's credentials mode is 'include'. The credentials mode of requests initiated by the XMLHttpRequest is controlled by the withCredentials attribute.

Here is my config:

location /sockjs-node/ {
        if ($request_method = 'OPTIONS') {
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Methods' 'GET, POST, OPTIONS';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Headers' 'DNT,User-Agent,X-Requested-With,If-Modified-Since,Cache-Control,Content-Type,Range';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Max-Age' 1728000;
          add_header 'Content-Type' 'text/plain; charset=utf-8';
          add_header 'Content-Length' 0;
          return 204;
        }
        if ($request_method = 'POST') {
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Methods' 'GET, POST, OPTIONS';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Headers' 'DNT,User-Agent,X-Requested-With,If-Modified-Since,Cache-Control,Content-Type,Range';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Expose-Headers' 'Content-Length,Content-Range';
        }
        if ($request_method = 'GET') {
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Methods' 'GET, POST, OPTIONS';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Headers' 'DNT,User-Agent,X-Requested-With,If-Modified-Since,Cache-Control,Content-Type,Range';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Expose-Headers' 'Content-Length,Content-Range';
        }

        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
        proxy_pass http://app/sockjs-node;
      }

I have also tried with the following in all 3 "if" blocks:

add_header "Access-Control-Allow-Origin" $http_origin;

I get the same error message as above.

I ahve also added the following in all 3 "if" blocks in addition to "$http_origin":

add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials' 'true';

I get the following error message:

sockjs.js?3600:1605 POST https://localhost:8080/sockjs-node/718/n0jb5hss/xhr_streaming?t=1558864860566 404

Access to XMLHttpRequest at 'https://localhost:8080/sockjs-node/718/n0jb5hss/xhr_streaming?t=1558864860566' from origin 'https://localhost' has been blocked by CORS policy: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource.

GET https://localhost:8080/sockjs-node/718/2rgh44pm/eventsource 404

On add_header, if your server will intentionally throw status code other than 200, 201, 204, 206, 301, 302, 303, 304, or 307 (Ex. 400 or 422) you should add always on each line

So instead of

add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*';
add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials' 'true';

Use

add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*' always;
add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials' 'true' always;

Source

thx!

I hope my recent solution help to someone, check this https://gist.github.com/alexjs/4165271#gistcomment-3138623

I'm facing the following error message. Any idea how to solve it please?

Access to XMLHttpRequest at 'https://localhost:8080/sockjs-node/info?t=1558864429094' from origin 'https://localhost' has been blocked by CORS policy: The value of the 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header in the response must not be the wildcard '*' when the request's credentials mode is 'include'. The credentials mode of requests initiated by the XMLHttpRequest is controlled by the withCredentials attribute.

Here is my config:

location /sockjs-node/ {
        if ($request_method = 'OPTIONS') {
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Methods' 'GET, POST, OPTIONS';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Headers' 'DNT,User-Agent,X-Requested-With,If-Modified-Since,Cache-Control,Content-Type,Range';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Max-Age' 1728000;
          add_header 'Content-Type' 'text/plain; charset=utf-8';
          add_header 'Content-Length' 0;
          return 204;
        }
        if ($request_method = 'POST') {
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Methods' 'GET, POST, OPTIONS';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Headers' 'DNT,User-Agent,X-Requested-With,If-Modified-Since,Cache-Control,Content-Type,Range';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Expose-Headers' 'Content-Length,Content-Range';
        }
        if ($request_method = 'GET') {
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' '*';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Methods' 'GET, POST, OPTIONS';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Headers' 'DNT,User-Agent,X-Requested-With,If-Modified-Since,Cache-Control,Content-Type,Range';
          add_header 'Access-Control-Expose-Headers' 'Content-Length,Content-Range';
        }

        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
        proxy_pass http://app/sockjs-node;
      }

I have also tried with the following in all 3 "if" blocks:

add_header "Access-Control-Allow-Origin" $http_origin;

I get the same error message as above.

I ahve also added the following in all 3 "if" blocks in addition to "$http_origin":

add_header 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials' 'true';

I get the following error message:

sockjs.js?3600:1605 POST https://localhost:8080/sockjs-node/718/n0jb5hss/xhr_streaming?t=1558864860566 404

Access to XMLHttpRequest at 'https://localhost:8080/sockjs-node/718/n0jb5hss/xhr_streaming?t=1558864860566' from origin 'https://localhost' has been blocked by CORS policy: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource.

GET https://localhost:8080/sockjs-node/718/2rgh44pm/eventsource 404

This is fantastic. It helped me solve my issue!

add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin $http_origin;
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Credentials true;

would work

Hi,

Is anyone able to assist with my issue. I am seeing that my cookie is coming through in the response headers, but not being saved on the browser. I am only noticing this in production (where I am using Nginx and SSL) and not in development (which is not using a proxy and not using SSL). I am using Express (Node) and Nginx on Ubuntu 18.04

My configurations are as follows:

Nginx (/etc/nginx/sites-available/default)

    server_name api.myBackendURL.net;

    location / {
    proxy_pass http://localhost:4000;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
   }

Cookie values, using express-session and cors

  const sessionOption: session.SessionOptions = {
    store: new RedisStore({
      client: redis
    }),
    name: 'qid',
    secret: 'njw32323ndiodqwnlad3',
    resave: false,
    proxy: process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production',
    saveUninitialized: false,
    cookie: {
      // Values from next examples with-passport
      domain: .myFrontendURL.app,
      maxAge: 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 91, // 3 month cookie
      expires: new Date(Date.now() + 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365 * 1000),
      httpOnly: true,
      secure: process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production',
      path: '/',
      sameSite: 'lax'
    }
  }
  app.use(
    cors({
      origin: "https://subdomain.myFrontendURL.app",
      credentials: true
    })
  )

Headers in the Response

Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: https://subdomain.myFrontendURL.app,
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 151
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2020 10:18:28 GMT
ETag: W/"97-gYNuyhWohicUF549wSDDpEE4o3M"
Server: nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu)
Set-Cookie: qid=s%3AtP2fO9aX1Lo7uU_dLKOewqC9zxf8B-2P.vXSlE1khTK6Qe6O0lIn7g1WxJ1NIJyFHFoff8Jl1IO0; Path=/; HTTPOnly; Secure; Expires=Fri, 15 Oct 3019 09:47:00 GMT; HttpOnly; Secure; SameSite=Lax
Vary: Origin
X-Powered-By: Express

If it's of any use, the request headers are as follows:

accept: */*
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br
Accept-Language: en-GB,en-US;q=0.9,en;q=0.8
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 282
content-type: application/json
Host: api.myBackendURL.net
Origin: https://subdomain.myFrontendURL.app
Referer: https://subdomain.myFrontendURL.app/
Sec-Fetch-Mode: cors
Sec-Fetch-Site: cross-site
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_5) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/78.0.3904.97 Safari/537.36

Just to note, sudo nginx -t returns test is successful, and I have restarted nginx etc.

So, i've never done anything with Nginx, cors, and have absolutely zero coding knowledge or experience, in a layman's terms, how in the world am i supposed to use any of this? It doesn't seem to work no matter how i do it. I'm using nginx 1.19.2

@DictatorL -- you'll find a file nginx/conf/nginx.conf in your installation that describes how nginx should accept traffic and route it to your application (here are some pre-canned ones you can use https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/start/#pre-canned-configurations). This gist shows you a few different examples of how you might setup CORS by using the add_header options, the exact one for you will depend on what you're trying to accomplish, you can learn more at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CORS... although as I pointed out above using a wildcard for the origin is not correct, use this instead:

add_header "Access-Control-Allow-Origin" $http_origin;

@DictatorL -- you'll find a file nginx/conf/nginx.conf in your installation that describes how nginx should accept traffic and route it to your application (here are some pre-canned ones you can use https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/start/#pre-canned-configurations). This gist shows you a few different examples of how you might setup CORS by using the add_header options, the exact one for you will depend on what you're trying to accomplish, you can learn more at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CORS... although as I pointed out above using a wildcard for the origin is not correct, use this instead:

add_header "Access-Control-Allow-Origin" $http_origin;

That worked!