django-cors-headers

A Django App that adds CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) headers to responses.

Although JSON-P is useful, it is strictly limited to GET requests. CORS builds on top of XmlHttpRequest to allow developers to make cross-domain requests, similar to same-domain requests. Read more about it here: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/cors/

Requirements

Tested with all combinations of:

• Python: 2.7, 3.6
• Django: 1.8, 1.9, 1.10, 1.11, 2.0

Setup

Install from pip:

pip install django-cors-headers

and then add it to your installed apps:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'corsheaders',
    ...
)

You will also need to add a middleware class to listen in on responses:

MIDDLEWARE = [  # Or MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES on Django < 1.10
    ...
    'corsheaders.middleware.CorsMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    ...
]

CorsMiddleware should be placed as high as possible, especially before any middleware that can generate responses such as Django's CommonMiddleware or Whitenoise's WhiteNoiseMiddleware. If it is not before, it will not be able to add the CORS headers to these responses.

Also if you are using CORS_REPLACE_HTTPS_REFERER it should be placed before Django's CsrfViewMiddleware (see more below).

Configuration

Configure the middleware's behaviour in your Django settings. You must add the hosts that are allowed to do cross-site requests to CORS_ORIGIN_WHITELIST, or set CORS_ORIGIN_ALLOW_ALL to True to allow all hosts.

CORS_ORIGIN_ALLOW_ALL

If True, the whitelist will not be used and all origins will be accepted. Defaults to False.

CORS_ORIGIN_WHITELIST

A list of origin hostnames that are authorized to make cross-site HTTP requests. The value 'null' can also appear in this list, and will match the Origin: null header that is used in "privacy-sensitive contexts", such as when the client is running from a file:// domain. Defaults to [].

Example:

CORS_ORIGIN_WHITELIST = (
    'google.com',
    'hostname.example.com',
    'localhost:8000',
    '127.0.0.1:9000'
)

CORS_ORIGIN_REGEX_WHITELIST

A list of regexes that match origin regex list of origin hostnames that are authorized to make cross-site HTTP requests. Defaults to []. Useful when CORS_ORIGIN_WHITELIST is impractical, such as when you have a large number of subdomains.

Example:

CORS_ORIGIN_REGEX_WHITELIST = (r'^(https?://)?(\w+\.)?google\.com$', )

---

The following are optional settings, for which the defaults probably suffice.

CORS_URLS_REGEX

A regex which restricts the URL's for which the CORS headers will be sent. Defaults to r'^.*$', i.e. match all URL's. Useful when you only need CORS on a part of your site, e.g. an API at /api/.

Example:

CORS_URLS_REGEX = r'^/api/.*$'

CORS_ALLOW_METHODS

A list of HTTP verbs that are allowed for the actual request. Defaults to:

CORS_ALLOW_METHODS = (
    'DELETE',
    'GET',
    'OPTIONS',
    'PATCH',
    'POST',
    'PUT',
)

The default can be imported as corsheaders.defaults.default_methods so you can just extend it with your custom methods. This allows you to keep up to date with any future changes. For example:

from corsheaders.defaults import default_methods

CORS_ALLOW_METHODS = default_methods + (
    'POKE',
)

CORS_ALLOW_HEADERS

The list of non-standard HTTP headers that can be used when making the actual request. Defaults to:

CORS_ALLOW_HEADERS = (
    'accept',
    'accept-encoding',
    'authorization',
    'content-type',
    'dnt',
    'origin',
    'user-agent',
    'x-csrftoken',
    'x-requested-with',
)

The default can be imported as corsheaders.defaults.default_headers so you can extend it with your custom headers. This allows you to keep up to date with any future changes. For example:

from corsheaders.defaults import default_headers

CORS_ALLOW_HEADERS = default_headers + (
    'my-custom-header',
)

CORS_EXPOSE_HEADERS

The list of HTTP headers that are to be exposed to the browser. Defaults to [].

CORS_PREFLIGHT_MAX_AGE

The number of seconds a client/browser can cache the preflight response. If this is 0 (or any falsey value), no max age header will be sent. Defaults to 86400 (one day).

Note: A preflight request is an extra request that is made when making a "not-so-simple" request (e.g. Content-Type is not application/x-www-form-urlencoded) to determine what requests the server actually accepts. Read more about it in the HTML 5 Rocks CORS tutorial.

CORS_ALLOW_CREDENTIALS

If True, cookies will be allowed to be included in cross-site HTTP requests. Defaults to False.

CORS_MODEL

If set, this should be the path to a model to look up allowed origins, in the form app.modelname. Defaults to None.

The model should inherit from corsheaders.models.AbstractCorsModel and specify the allowed origin in the CharField called cors.

CSRF Integration

Most sites will need to take advantage of the Cross-Site Request Forgery protection that Django offers. CORS and CSRF are separate, and Django has no way of using your CORS configuration to exempt sites from the Referer checking that it does on secure requests. The way to do that is with its CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS setting. For example:

CORS_ORIGIN_WHITELIST = (
    'read.only.com',
    'change.allowed.com',
)

CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS = (
    'change.allowed.com',
)

CORS_REPLACE_HTTPS_REFERER

CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS was introduced in Django 1.9, so users of earlier versions will need an alternate solution. If CORS_REPLACE_HTTPS_REFERER is True, CorsMiddleware will change the Referer header to something that will pass Django's CSRF checks whenever the CORS checks pass. Defaults to False.

Note that unlike CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS, this setting does not allow you to distinguish between domains that are trusted to read resources by CORS and domains that are trusted to change resources by avoiding CSRF protection.

With this feature enabled you should also add corsheaders.middleware.CorsPostCsrfMiddleware after django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware in your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES to undo the Referer replacement:

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = [
    ...
    'corsheaders.middleware.CorsMiddleware',
    ...
    'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
    'corsheaders.middleware.CorsPostCsrfMiddleware',
    ...
]

Signals

If you have a use case that requires more than just the above configuration, you can attach code to check if a given request should be allowed. For example, this can be used to read the list of origins you allow from a model. Attach any number of handlers to the check_request_enabled Django signal, which provides the request argument (use **kwargs in your handler to protect against any future arguments being added). If any handler attached to the signal returns a truthy value, the request will be allowed.

For example you might define a handler like this:

# myapp/handlers.py
from corsheaders.signals import check_request_enabled

from .models import MySite

def cors_allow_mysites(sender, request, **kwargs):
    return MySite.objects.filter(host=request.host).exists()

check_request_enabled.connect(cors_allow_mysites)

Then connect it at app ready time using a Django AppConfig:

# myapp/__init__.py

default_app_config = 'myapp.apps.MyAppConfig'

# myapp/apps.py

from django.apps import AppConfig

class MyAppConfig(AppConfig):
    name = 'myapp'

    def ready(self):
        # Makes sure all signal handlers are connected
        from . import handlers  # noqa

A common use case for the signal is to allow all origins to access a subset of URL's, whilst allowing a normal set of origins to access all URL's. This isn't possible using just the normal configuration, but it can be achieved with a signal handler.

First set CORS_ORIGIN_WHITELIST to the list of trusted origins that are allowed to access every URL, and then add a handler to check_request_enabled to allow CORS regardless of the origin for the unrestricted URL's. For example:

# myapp/handlers.py
from corsheaders.signals import check_request_enabled

def cors_allow_api_to_everyone(sender, request, **kwargs):
    return request.path.startswith('/api/')

check_request_enabled.connect(cors_allow_api_to_everyone)

Credits

django-cors-headers was created by Otto Yiu (@ottoyiu) and has been worked on by 25+ contributors. Thanks to every contributor, and if you want to get involved please don't hesitate to make a pull request.