jQuery plugin for cross-domain CORS ajax-requests in Internet Explorer 8 and 9

Internet Explorer 8 and 9 versions doesn't support cross-domain CORS ajax-requests with XMLHttpRequest, for these purposes IE 8/9 using XDomainRequest. jquery-transport-xdr makes transparent replasement jQuery transport, that's allow cross-domain ajax-requests in IE8 and IE9 without changing source code.

Limitations

XDomainRequest have some limitations:

• server must return Access-Control-Allow-Origin header as for usual CORS request
• HTTP and HTTPS only allowed
• GET and POST only allowed
• custom headers can't be added to request
• there is no Content-Type header in request
• Cookie can't be sended
• source scheme of URI (https://source) must be the same as destination URI scheme (https://destination)
• there is no ability to get success response code
• there is no ability to get failure response code

Installation

1. Add jquery-transport-xdr to HTML body after jQuery:

<script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.3.min.js"></script>
<!--[if (IE 8)|(IE 9)]><script src="//cdn.rawgit.com/gfdev/javascript-jquery-transport-xdr/master/dist/jquery.transport.xdr.min.js"></script><![endif]-->

or Bower:

$ bower install jquery-transport-xdr

<script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.3.min.js"></script>
<!--[if (IE 8)|(IE 9)]><script src="//host/path/bower_modules/dist/jquery.transport.xdr.min.js"></script><![endif]-->

or NPM:

$ npm install jquery-transport-xdr

<script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.3.min.js"></script>
<!--[if (IE 8)|(IE 9)]><script src="//host/path/node_modules/dist/jquery.transport.xdr.min.js"></script><![endif]-->

Usage examples

After adding jquery-transport-xdr you can make ajax-requests as usual, without changing code:

POST:

var xhr = $.ajax({
    type: 'POST',
    url: 'https://baconipsum.com/api/?type=meat-and-filler&format=json',
    dataType: 'json'
});

GET:

var xhr = $.ajax({
    type: 'GET',
    url: 'https://baconipsum.com/api/?type=meat-and-filler&format=json',
    dataType: 'json'
});

Option forceMethod

XDomainRequest have limitations, it doesn't allow PUT, DELETE, PATCH and HEAD requests, you will receive error XXX Method Not Allowed if try to use some of them, but jquery-transport-xdr can make replacement:

• HEAD => GET
• PUT|DELETE|PATCH => POST

You should use option forceMethod:

HEAD:

var xhr = $.ajax({
    type: 'HEAD',
    url: 'https://baconipsum.com/api/?type=meat-and-filler&format=json',
    dataType: 'json',
    forceMethod: true
});

HEAD will be replaced with GET in this case and __method=HEAD will be added to request params in URI:

https://baconipsum.com/api/?type=meat-and-filler&format=json => https://baconipsum.com/api/?type=meat-and-filler&format=json&__method=HEAD

Param __method you can get on server and deretmine original method.

The same way for methods PUT, DELETE and PATCH except for param __method will be added to request body and original method will be replaced with POST:

PUT:

var xhr = $.ajax({
    type: 'PUT',
    url: 'https://baconipsum.com/api/?type=meat-and-filler&format=json',
    data: { test: 'test' },
    dataType: 'json',
    forceMethod: true
});

PUT => POST

POST /api/?type=meat-and-filler&format=json HTTP/1.1
Host: baconipsum.com
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 0
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache

test=test&__method=PUT

Option forceContentType

XDomainRequest limitations doesn't allow to send Content-Type header, but you can send it if will add forceContentType option:

var xhr = $.ajax({
    type: 'POST',
    url: 'https://baconipsum.com/api/?type=meat-and-filler&format=json',
    data: { test: 'test' },
    dataType: 'json',
    forceContentType: true
});

Content-Type value will be sended in __contentType param.

forceContentType and forceMethod options can be used together:

var xhr = $.ajax({
    type: 'PATCH',
    url: 'https://baconipsum.com/api/?type=meat-and-filler&format=json',
    contentType: 'multipart/form-data; charset=UTF-8',
    data: { test: 'test' },
    dataType: 'json',
    forceMethod: true,
    forceContentType: true
});

License

MIT license.