If you do not have access to your server configuration, and if you do not control the external php script (assuming it's not set up to serve as a reverse proxy), then you absolutely cannot use a standalone javascript solution for this.
Rather, you would have to make the external request from your own local php script. Then you would call your local php script from Ajax, and this will work since you are accessing a local file, and thus not violating CORS.
Here is an example of an Ajax call thru a local PHP script.
Imagine a scenario where you allow users to lookup an album name. The user enters the name of the song, and the artist. You make a request to a 3rd party api, and return the response back to the user via a JavaScript alert notification. For this example, assume the user enters 'Black' and 'Pearl Jam' as the song and artist names
Ajax POST to Local PHP Script with HTML Example:
<html>
<head>
<!-- Load jQuery Library from Google -->
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.3/jquery.min.js"> </script>
</head>
<body>
<h1> Ajax to local PHP Script Example: </h1>
<form id="getArtist">
Artist: <input type="text" placeholder="Pearl Jam">
Song: <input type="text" placeholder="Black">
<input type="submit" value="Click Here to Active Ajax Call">
</form>
</body>
</html>
<script type='text/javascript'>
$("#getArtist").submit(function(event) { //Listen to when the Submit is pressed
event.preventDefault(); //Stop the submit from actually performing a submit
$.post("local_script.php", { song: "Black", artist: "Pearl Jam", dataType: "json"}) //prepare and execute post
.done(function(response) { //Once we receive response from PHP script
//Do something with the response:
alert("The album name is: " +response);
//Look into JSON.parse and JSON.stringify for accessing data
});
});
</script>
PHP GET
<?php
$url = 'http://api.music.com/album';
$song = urlencode($_GET['song'])); //Need to url encode
$artist = urlencode($_GET['artist']); //Need to url encode
$response = file_get_contents($url .'?song=' .$song .'&artist=' .$artist);
//**The url looks like http://api.music.com/album?song=Black&artist=Pearl+Jam
//** For purposes of this demo, we will manually assume the JSON response from the API:
$response = '{ "album": "Ten" }'; //(Raw JSON returned by API)
echo $response; //Return the response back to AJAX, assuming it is already returned as JSON. Else encode it json_encode($response)
PHP POST (using curl)
<?php
$url = 'http://api.music.com/album';
$song = urlencode($_GET['song'])); //Need to url encode
$artist = urlencode($_GET['artist']); //Need to url encode
//$headers = array("Key: " ."Value","Key: " ."Value", //Set any headers, if required.
$post = 'song=' .$song .'&artist=' .$artist; //Prepare Post parameters
/* Configure Curl */
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); //Allow music api to send response
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1); //Signifyd that we are doing a POST request
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post);
//curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $header); //Only if you need to send headers
/* Get Response */
$response = curl_exec($ch);
//** For purposes of this demo, we will manually assume the JSON response from the API:
$response = '{ "album": "Ten" }'; //(Raw JSON returned by API)
echo $response; //Send response back to Ajax, assuming it was already returned in JSON. Else encode it.
Further reading on Ajax requests:
https://api.jquery.com/jquery.get/
https://api.jquery.com/jquery.post/
