Cross-origin access errors with GapReload and Phonegap Developer App

[AdamDz]

Couchbase Lite does not work with rapid development tools that implement live app reload and eliminate the compile and install step (i.e. calling cordova run every JS/HTML change). These tools include: GapReload and Adobe's PhoneGap Developer App. They work by redirecting the webview from a file:// location to a server on the developer's machine started by cordova serve. When we try to connect to Couchbase Lite in such setup, an error is thrown:

XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://lite.couchbase./temp. Origin http://192.168.1.104:8000 is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin.

The cross-resource origin policy is not applied when the embedded web application is served from the standard location using file://, but it is after the redirection to http://

A solution would be to add a header to HTTP responses returned by Couchbase Lite:

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

[snej]

CBL has support for adding custom HTTP headers to return; see https://github.com/couchbase/couchbase-lite-ios/pull/203 . The PhoneGap plugin just needs to add this line:

[[CBLManager sharedInstance].customHTTPHeaders setObject:@"*" forKey:@"Access-Control-Allow-Origin"];

[AdamDz]

The ideal solution would be to add support for setting custom HTTP headers using the REST API. The PhoneGap plugin would then have the same feature set.

[AdamDz]

I need to admit that your solution works well and doesn't require to recompile CBL binaries. The mentioned line can be added in src/ios/CBLine.m and it works. Thanks.

[stenit]

I had the same issue on Android. For debugging purpose, I wanted to access my cblite on the mobile device from my local web application (using "ionic serve"). You need to do two things: 1) Tunnel the cblite port from your local machine to your phone: "adb forward tcp:5984 tcp:5984" 2) Recompile the couchbase-light-java-listener JAR. Add the following lines to the LiteServlet.java file:

@Override
public void service(HttpServletRequest request, final HttpServletResponse response)
        throws ServletException, IOException {

    // Handle OPTIONS Request in order to respond to CORS
    response.setHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "*");
    response.setHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "GET, PUT, POST, DELETE");
    response.setHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "content-type, accept");
    if("OPTIONS".equals(request.getMethod())){
        Log.v(Log.TAG_LISTENER, "Handle OPTIONS Request in order to respond to CORS");
        response.setStatus(200);
        return;
    } 
  /* REST OF THE service() METHOD */
  }

Thats it.

See also https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mobile-couchbase/a80GfiBwkuI/MoBtQNT8zPUJ where I started the discussion month's ago.

[jamesnocentini]

we now have a version of LiteServ with CORS available for development purposes https://developer.couchbase.com/documentation/mobile/1.4/installation/phonegap/index.html#development-environment. Closing this ticket.

[swavans]

I'm still having this issue, is there a way to fix this?