Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) is a security feature implemented by web browsers to restrict web pages from making requests to a different domain than the one that served the web page. This is a critical aspect of web security, helping to prevent malicious sites from accessing sensitive data from another domain.

When developing web applications, you may encounter situations where your web page needs to request resources from a different domain. This can lead to CORS errors if the appropriate headers are not set to allow these cross-origin requests. Common challenges include:

• Handling pre-flight requests.
• Allowing specific methods and headers.
• Managing credentials in cross-origin requests.
• Setting the appropriate origins.

Pode simplifies handling CORS by providing the Set-PodeSecurityAccessControl function, which allows you to define the necessary headers to manage cross-origin requests effectively.

1. Access-Control-Allow-Origin: Specifies which origins are permitted to access the resource.
2. Access-Control-Allow-Methods: Lists the HTTP methods that are allowed when accessing the resource.
3. Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Indicates which HTTP headers can be used during the actual request.
4. Access-Control-Max-Age: Specifies how long the results of a pre-flight request can be cached.
5. Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: Indicates whether credentials are allowed in the request.

The Set-PodeSecurityAccessControl function allows you to set these headers easily. Here’s how you can address common CORS challenges using this function:

1. Allowing All Origins

   Set-PodeSecurityAccessControl -Origin '*'

   This sets the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header to allow requests from any origin.

2. Specifying Allowed Methods

   Set-PodeSecurityAccessControl -Methods 'GET', 'POST', 'OPTIONS'

   This sets the Access-Control-Allow-Methods header to allow only the specified methods.

3. Specifying Allowed Headers

   Set-PodeSecurityAccessControl -Headers 'Content-Type', 'Authorization'

   This sets the Access-Control-Allow-Headers header to allow the specified headers.

4. Handling Credentials

   Set-PodeSecurityAccessControl -Credentials

   This sets the Access-Control-Allow-Credentials header to allow credentials in requests.

5. Setting Cache Duration for Pre-flight Requests

   Set-PodeSecurityAccessControl -Duration 3600

   This sets the Access-Control-Max-Age header to cache the pre-flight request for one hour.

6. Automatic Header and Method Detection

   Set-PodeSecurityAccessControl -AutoHeaders -AutoMethods

   These parameters automatically populate the list of allowed headers and methods based on your OpenApi definition and defined routes, respectively.

7. Enabling Global OPTIONS Route

   Set-PodeSecurityAccessControl -WithOptions

   This creates a global OPTIONS route to handle pre-flight requests automatically.

8. Additional Security with Cross-Domain XHR Requests

   Set-PodeSecurityAccessControl -CrossDomainXhrRequests

   This adds the 'x-requested-with' header to the list of allowed headers, enhancing security.

Here is an example of configuring CORS settings in Pode using Set-PodeSecurityAccessControl:

Set-PodeSecurityAccessControl -Origin 'https://example.com' -Methods 'GET', 'POST' -Headers 'Content-Type', 'Authorization' -Duration 7200 -Credentials -WithOptions -AutoHeaders -AutoMethods -CrossDomainXhrRequests

This example sets up CORS to allow requests from https://example.com, allows GET and POST methods, permits Content-Type and Authorization headers, enables credentials, caches pre-flight requests for two hours, automatically detects headers and methods, and allows cross-domain XHR requests.

For more information on CORS, you can refer to the following resources:

• Fetch Living Standard
• CORS in ASP.NET Core
• MDN Web Docs on CORS