CORS Support in the Experience Cloud Identity Service

Browsers use Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) to request resources from a domain other than the current domain. The Experience Cloud Identity Service supports CORS standards that enable these client-side, cross-origin resource requests. The ID service reverts to JSONP requests on older browsers or browsers that do not support CORS.

Problems with Same-Origin Policies and ID Service Requests

Same-origin policies are security controls or restrictions enforced by a web browser. When enforced on this level, the web browser itself determines if a request for resources made from one page to another will be permitted or blocked. To determine if a request is a same-origin request, the browser compares:

• Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs)
• Host names (e.g., http://www.my-webpage-example.com)
• Port numbers (e.g., port 80 and 440 for HTTP and HTTPS requests)

The browser allows a request to succeed if both pages share these characteristics and blocks resource requests if they do not.

CORS Resolves Problems with Same-Origin Policies

CORS provides a secure, effective way to request resources across different domains. The CORS specification includes a set of HTTP headers that browsers use to send, receive, and evaluate resource requests. Evaluating a resource request is called a preflight check. This check lets browsers and servers determine which requests are allowed or blocked. The preflight check is transparent to the app, API, or script that requests a resource. Two headers that are important in the resource request process include:

• Origin: A request header that identifies the source of a request.
• Access-Control-Allow-Origin: A response header that indicates if a resource can be shared with the requestor.

Let’s take a look at how these headers work. In this example, say we have a financial services company that has implemented the Experience Cloud ID service on their site, www.finance-website.com. The following table defines how the CORS request and response headers check for access to a resource.

See also useCORSOnly.

Other Benefits of Using CORS

The table below describes some of the advantages CORS provides to customers who use the ID service.