No more Access-Control-Allow-Origin error

Problem

No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource

This is the error that bugged me the most in the early stages of my web development journey.😪

To know more about this error and about CORS:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CORS/Errors/CORSMissingAllowOrigin

Solution

The simplest way to resolve this issue is to build a proxy server.

In computer networks, a proxy is a type of proxy server that retrieves resources on behalf of a client from one or more servers.

Don't let the name fool you, it is simple, dead simple. Of course only if you have,

1. Visual Studio Code or any other code editor of your preference.
2. Node JS installed.
3. Some basics of Express JS
4. Some knowledge about Axios

If you don't know anything about Express, go to any tutorial on the internet and learn to setup an Express app, just the basics nothing much.

I have created a cors activated API for this tutorial (Lets call it Random value API), for which we are building the proxy server.

Random value API: https://random-value-generator.herokuapp.com/

Alright lets get started 💪

Step 1

Create an empty folder, lets say its name is proxy-server-demo and open it with VS Code. Open terminal and enter npm init -y

This will create a file called package.json in the folder.

Step 2

Install Express JS using npm install express --save command in the terminal.

This creates package-lock.json and node_modules folder.

Step 3

In order to send requests from the server we are creating, we need a package called axios which can be installed through the following command.

npm install axios --save

To set the Access-Control-Allow-Origin property to allow all origins the access to the response we need a package called cors. So install that using

npm install cors --save

Step 4

Create a new file index.js and enter the code below

const axios = require("axios");
const cors = require("cors");
const express = require("express");

const app = express();

const port = 3000;

app.use(
    cors({
        origin: "*", // Sets Access-Control-Allow-Origin to allow all origins
    })
); 

app.get("/", async (req, res) => {
    // Requesting Random value API
    try {
        const response = await axios.get(
            "https://random-value-generator.herokuapp.com/"
        );
        console.log(response.data);
        res.send(`${response.data}`);
    } catch (error) {
        console.log(error);
    }
});

app.listen(port, () => {
    console.log("Switched On");
});

Step 5

Run the server using node index.js and make sure you add some reaction to this article😉.

Voila! 🎉 You have successfully setup a proxy server, Test it with your frontend.

Repository for the proxy server created in this tutorial: https://github.com/ikkurthis1998/proxy-server-demo

Conclusion

It is short one, but a useful one. If you have any queries still unresolved, please comment down below, I will try my best to resolve them.

See you in the next one. Howdy🤠