Enable CORS for Web Api 2 and OWIN token authentication

Question

I have an ASP.NET MVC 5 webproject (localhost:81) that calls functions from my WebApi 2 project (localhost:82) using Knockoutjs, to make the communication between the two projects I enable CORS. Everything works so far until I tried to implement OWIN token authentication to the WebApi.

To use the /token endpoint on the WebApi, I also need to enable CORS on the endpoint but after hours of trying and searching for solutions it is still now working and the api/token still results in:

XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://localhost:82/token. No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. 

public void Configuration(IAppBuilder app)
{
    app.UseCors(Microsoft.Owin.Cors.CorsOptions.AllowAll);
    TokenConfig.ConfigureOAuth(app);
    ...
}

TokenConfig

public static void ConfigureOAuth(IAppBuilder app)
{
    app.CreatePerOwinContext(ApplicationDbContext.Create);
    app.CreatePerOwinContext<AppUserManager>(AppUserManager.Create);

    OAuthAuthorizationServerOptions OAuthServerOptions = new OAuthAuthorizationServerOptions()
    {
        AllowInsecureHttp = true,
        TokenEndpointPath = new PathString("/token"),
        AccessTokenExpireTimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromDays(1),
        Provider = new SimpleAuthorizationServerProvider()
    };

    app.UseOAuthAuthorizationServer(OAuthServerOptions);
    app.UseOAuthBearerAuthentication(new OAuthBearerAuthenticationOptions());
}

AuthorizationProvider

public override async Task GrantResourceOwnerCredentials(OAuthGrantResourceOwnerCredentialsContext context)
{
    context.OwinContext.Response.Headers.Add("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", new[] { "*" });

    var appUserManager = context.OwinContext.GetUserManager<AppUserManager>();
    IdentityUser user = await appUserManager.FindAsync(context.UserName, context.Password);

    if (user == null)
    {
        context.SetError("invalid_grant", "The user name or password is incorrect.");
        return;
    }
    ... claims
}

IdentityConfig

public static AppUserManager Create(IdentityFactoryOptions<AppUserManager> options, IOwinContext context)
{
    // Tried to enable it again without success. 
    //context.Response.Headers.Add("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", new[] {"*"});
    
    var manager = new AppUserManager(new UserStore<AppUser>(context.Get<ApplicationDbContect>()));
        
    ...

    var dataProtectionProvider = options.DataProtectionProvider;
    if (dataProtectionProvider != null)
    {
        manager.UserTokenProvider =
                new DataProtectorTokenProvider<AppUser>(dataProtectionProvider.Create("ASP.NET Identity"));
    }
    return manager;
}

EDIT:

1. Important note is that opening the endpoint directly (localhost:82/token) works.

2. Calling the Api (localhost:82/api/..) from the webproject also works, so the CORS is enabled for WebApi.

Answer 1

I know your issue was solved inside comments, but I believe is important to understand what was causing it and how to resolve this entire class of problems.

Looking at your code I can see you are setting the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header more than once for the Token endpoint:

app.UseCors(Microsoft.Owin.Cors.CorsOptions.AllowAll);

And inside GrantResourceOwnerCredentials method:

context.OwinContext.Response.Headers.Add("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", new[] { "*" }); 

This, looking at the CORS specifications, is itself an issue because:

If the response includes zero or more than one Access-Control-Allow-Origin header values, return fail and terminate this algorithm.

In your scenario, the framework is setting this header two times, and understanding how CORS must be implemented, this will result in the header removed in certain circumstances (possibly client-related).

This is also confirmed by the following question answer: Duplicate Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * causing COR error?

For this reason moving the call to app.UseCors after the call to ConfigureOAuth allows your CORS header to be set only once (because the owin pipeline is interrupted at the OAuth middleware, and never reaches the Microsoft CORS middleware for the Token endpoint) and makes your Ajax call working.

For a better and global solution you may try to put again app.UseCors before the OAuth middleware call, and remove the second Access-Control-Allow-Origin insertion inside GrantResourceOwnerCredentials.

Answer 2

Follow below steps and you will have your API working:

1. Remove any code like config.EnableCors(), [EnableCors(header:"*"....)] from your API.

2. Go to startup.cs and add below line

   app.UseCors(Microsoft.Owin.Cors.CorsOptions.AllowAll);
   

before

    ConfigureAuth(app);

Uou will also need to install Microsoft.owin.cors package to use this functionality

Answer 3

Solving the problem without using app.UseCors()

I had the same problem. I used a Vue.Js client with axois to access my REST-API with cross-corps. On my Owin-Api-Server I was not able to add Microsoft.Owin.Cors nuget due to version conflicts with other 3rd party components. So I couldn't use app.UseCors() method but I solved it by using the middleware pipeline.

private IDisposable _webServer = null;

public void Start(ClientCredentials credentials)
{
    ...
    _webServer = WebApp.Start(BaseAddress, (x) => Configuration(x));
    ...
}

public void Configuration(IAppBuilder app)
{
    ...
    // added middleware insted of app.UseCors(Microsoft.Owin.Cors.CorsOptions.AllowAll);
    app.Use<MyOwinMiddleware>();
    app.UseWebApi(config);
    ...
}

public class MyOwinMiddleware : OwinMiddleware
{
    public MyOwinMiddleware(OwinMiddleware next) :
        base(next)
    { }

    public override async Task Invoke(IOwinContext context)
    {
        var request = context.Request;
        var response = context.Response;

        response.OnSendingHeaders(state =>
        {
            var resp = (IOwinResponse)state;

            // without this headers -> client apps will be blocked to consume data from this api
            if (!resp.Headers.ContainsKey("Access-Control-Allow-Origin"))
                resp.Headers.Add("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", new[] { "*" });
            if (!resp.Headers.ContainsKey("Access-Control-Allow-Headers"))
                resp.Headers.Add("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", new[] { "*" });
            if (!resp.Headers.ContainsKey("Access-Control-Allow-Methods"))
                resp.Headers.Add("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", new[] { "*" });

            // by default owin is blocking options not from same origin with MethodNotAllowed
            if (resp.StatusCode == (int)HttpStatusCode.MethodNotAllowed &&
                HttpMethod.Options == new HttpMethod(request.Method))
            {
                resp.StatusCode = (int)HttpStatusCode.OK;
                resp.ReasonPhrase = HttpStatusCode.OK.ToString();
            }

        }, response);

        await Next.Invoke(context);
    }
}

So I created my own middleware and manipulated the response. GET calls only needed the Access-Control-Allow headers whereas for OPTIONS calls I also needed to manipulate the StatusCode because axois.post() is calling first with OPTIONS-method before sending the POST. If OPTIONS return StatusCode 405, the POST will never be sent.

This solved my problem. Maybe this can help somebody too.