AngularJS: $http.post throws error

Question

I am using Request Bin to post some data. In my controller, I have the following code:

$http.post('http://requestb.in/redacted', fooBar).
    success(function(data) {
        $scope.fooBarPostedSuccess = true;
    }).
    error(function(err) {
        console.log("Error while posting to Request Bin");
        console.log("Error Info : " + err);
    });

This is triggered by means on a button on the UI. Now when this gets triggered, the data is not posted to Request Bin and I get this error:

XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://requestb.in/redacted.
Origin http://localhost:3000 is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin.

How do I post data to request bin through an AngularJS controller? Also, what does the above error mean?

EDIT : I wish to add here that I am using Node.js with AngularJS. Is this something to do with Node perhaps?

Answer 1

Ah yes... you are dealing with cross-domain scripting issues. This is not an AngularJS problem, but a browser security limitation and a VERY common friction point.

You cannot POST/PUT/DELETE to another domain (different from the one which is hosting -- localhost in your case) without doing some Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS). You are limited to GET for a cross-domain HTTP request.

You have two options:

1. See if your API supports any cross-domain capabilities. This might be via CORS or it might be via an overloaded GET API or JSONP.

2. Proxy requests through your server. Since you are using Node.js, proxying REST through your server is extremely simple... you just need to set up a route handler (like /api/redacted) in your Node.js server and then make a new request to your actual API server with something like Restler (NPM package) and return the result back to your client.

Hope this helps!

EDIT:

Your API supports JSONP (Your API Docs). You should be able to use Angular's JSONP function to access your API's JSONP capabilities. (Angular.js JSONP docs).

Since you want to be able to POST to the service, you will need to use the second approach.

Answer 2

CORS allows both GET and POST

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-origin_resource_sharing

http://www.w3.org/TR/cors/

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/HTTP/Access_control_CORS

Now, that that's out of the way... I too have found that angular's $http won't let me POST cross domain. I was suspicious about that though because I have jquery ajax calls in other projects that can post cross domain just fine. So, I swapped my $http POST with $.ajax POST and that worked.

// $http({
//  url: url,
//  method: "POST",
//  data: data
// })
// .success(successCallback)
// .error(errorCallback)

// ole reliable
$.ajax({
  type : "POST",
  url : url,
  data : data,
  success : successCallback,
  error : errorCallback,
  cache : false,
  dataType : 'json',
})

Answer 3

You can use PutsReq instead of RequestBin. PutsReq supports CORS.