OPTIONS (failed) only on Chrome and Firefox

Question

I make a POST request and the request just sits, pending until it eventually fails. I've monitored the nginx logs and the node server logs and the request doesn't even register. This works for anyone else that I've had test it except one other colleague. If I use the edge browser or a different computer it works fine.

I have attempted to make POST requests to other (custom) servers and it hangs on options there as well. I have also made the POST request with jQuery and it fails the same way.

It's maybe worth noting that I am using the withCredentials flag.

Headers:

Provisional headers are shown
Access-Control-Request-Headers:content-type
Access-Control-Request-Method:GET
Origin:http://localhost:8080
Referer:http://localhost:8080/<path>
User-Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/51.0.2704.84 Safari/537.36

The request:

  public login(user) {
    const endpoint = `http://<url>`;

    let headers = new Headers();
    headers.append('Content-type', 'application/json');

    return this.http
      .post(endpoint, JSON.stringify(user), {
        headers: headers,
      });

  }

I subscribe to the call in my component:

this._accountService.login(this.user)
        .subscribe(res => {
            console.log("logged in!");
            if (res.json().status === "success") {
                window.location.href = `/home/${this.org}/${this.product}`;
            }
            else {
                // What other options are there?
                console.log("Do something else maybe?");
            }
        },
        err => {
            this.invalidLogin = true;
            console.log("Ye shall not pass!");
        });

Successful user's headers

Accept:*/*
Accept-Encoding:gzip, deflate, sdch
Accept-Language:en-US,en;q=0.8
Access-Control-Request-Headers:content-type
Access-Control-Request-Method:POST
Connection:keep-alive
Host:<url>
Origin:<url>
Referer:<url>
User-Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/52.0.2743.33 Safari/537.36

From chrome://net-internals/#events

t=61869793 [st=    0] +REQUEST_ALIVE  [dt=60162]
                       --> has_upload = false
                       --> is_pending = true
                       --> load_flags = 34624 (DO_NOT_SAVE_COOKIES | DO_NOT_SEND_AUTH_DATA | DO_NOT_SEND_COOKIES | MAYBE_USER_GESTURE | VERIFY_EV_CERT)
                       --> load_state = 14 (WAITING_FOR_RESPONSE)
                       --> method = "OPTIONS"
                       --> net_error = -1 (ERR_IO_PENDING)
                       --> status = "IO_PENDING"
                       --> url = "<url>"
t=61929955 [st=60162]   -HTTP_STREAM_PARSER_READ_HEADERS
                         --> net_error = -324 (ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE)
t=61929955 [st=60162]   -HTTP_TRANSACTION_READ_HEADERS
                         --> net_error = -324 (ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE)
t=61929955 [st=60162]   -URL_REQUEST_START_JOB
                         --> net_error = -324 (ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE)
t=61929955 [st=60162]    URL_REQUEST_DELEGATE  [dt=0]
t=61929955 [st=60162] -REQUEST_ALIVE
                       --> net_error = -324 (ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE)

I'm really guessing this is related to something that is cached in my browser(s) but I really cannot find what. I've cleared all cookies and anything that could be stored. Where else can I check to clear things? This is clearly something local to my computer/browser (and one other unfortunate person).

Answer 1

Please try to subscribe() to the observable.

return this.http
  .post(endpoint, JSON.stringify(user), {
    headers: headers,
  }).subscribe(() => console.log("POST done!"));

Answer 2

Have you tried setting the 'Cache-Control' in your headers? I think in jQuery you can simply set

$.ajax({    
  cache: false 
});

or adding a header with a regular ajax request

request.setRequestHeader("Cache-Control", "no-cache"); 

Answer 3

There are issues with CORS and using localhost as the domain (which you have listed in the ORIGIN headers). Typically CORS / OPTIONS requests don't work properly when localhost is involved for certain security reasons, but hanging isn't normally what happens so this might not be the correct answer but its worth a shot!

Try adding a new host to your local machine and removing localhost from the equation. Just throwing this idea out there and hope that it might help you out!

As per comment below

Your server appears to allow the connection, but it does not appear to send a response. Are you able to post the headers from a successful OPTIONS request to prove that the server is actually able to handle these requests.

Answer 4

Why don't you just prevent getting into OPTIONS request loop . It really drives you crazy at times . Other browsers do not trigger OPTIONS request but chrome and firefox does to ensure CORS . I have successfully used this library named as xdomain from github , and it really works !! Their github introduction page introduce xdomain as a CORS alternative . And most importantly i used it in JQuery , but it also does support Angular's http service . Have a look at it . It may help you for good :) . Here's the link to library Xdomain CORS Alternative