Access-Control-Allow-Headers
The HTTP Access-Control-Allow-Headers
response header is used in response to a preflight request to indicate the HTTP headers that can be used during the actual request.
This header is required if the preflight request contains Access-Control-Request-Headers
.
Note: The CORS-safelisted request headers are always allowed and usually aren't listed in Access-Control-Allow-Headers
unless there is a need to circumvent the additional safelist restrictions.
Header type | Response header |
---|---|
Forbidden header name | No |
Syntax
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: <header-name>
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: <header-name>, <header-name>
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: *
Directives
<header-name>
-
The name of a supported request header. The header may list any number of headers, separated by commas.
*
(wildcard)-
Any header. The value
*
only counts as a special wildcard value for requests without credentials (requests without HTTP cookies or HTTP authentication information). In requests with credentials, it is treated as the literal header name*
without special semantics. TheAuthorization
header can't be wildcarded and always needs to be listed explicitly.
Examples
Implementing a custom header
Below is an example of an Access-Control-Allow-Headers
header.
It indicates that a custom header named X-Custom-Header
is supported by CORS requests to the server, in addition to the CORS-safelisted request headers.
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: X-Custom-Header
Supporting multiple headers
This example shows Access-Control-Allow-Headers
when it specifies support for multiple headers.
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: X-Custom-Header, Upgrade-Insecure-Requests
Bypassing additional restrictions on CORS-safelisted headers
Although CORS-safelisted request headers are always allowed and don't usually need to be listed in Access-Control-Allow-Headers
, listing them anyway will circumvent the additional restrictions that apply.
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Accept
Handling preflight requests
Let's look at an example of a preflight request involving Access-Control-Allow-Headers
.
Request
First, the preflight request is an OPTIONS
request that includes some combination of the three preflight request headers: Access-Control-Request-Method
, Access-Control-Request-Headers
, and Origin
.
The preflight request below tells the server that we want to send a CORS GET
request with the headers listed in Access-Control-Request-Headers
(Content-Type
and X-Requested-With
).
OPTIONS /resource/foo
Access-Control-Request-Method: GET
Access-Control-Request-Headers: content-type,x-requested-with
Origin: https://foo.bar.org
Response
If the CORS request indicated by the preflight request is authorized, the server will respond to the preflight request with a message that indicates the allowed origin, methods, and headers. Below, we see that Access-Control-Allow-Headers
includes the headers that were requested.
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Length: 0
Connection: keep-alive
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: https://foo.bar.org
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: POST, GET, OPTIONS, DELETE
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Content-Type, x-requested-with
Access-Control-Max-Age: 86400
If the requested method isn't supported, the server will respond with an error.
Specifications
Specification |
---|
Fetch Standard # http-access-control-allow-headers |
Browser compatibility
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