Access-Control-Allow-Headers

The Access-Control-Allow-Headers response header is used in response to a preflight request which includes the Access-Control-Request-Headers to indicate which HTTP headers can be used during the actual request.

This header is required if the request has an Access-Control-Request-Headers header.

Syntax

Access-Control-Allow-Headers: <header-name>[, <header-name>]*
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: *

Directives

<header-name>

The name of a supported request header. The header may list any number of headers, separated by commas.

* (wildcard)

The value "*" only counts as a special wildcard value for requests without credentials (requests without HTTP cookies or HTTP authentication information). In requests with credentials, it is treated as the literal header name "*" without special semantics. Note that the Authorization header can't be wildcarded and always needs to be listed explicitly.

Examples

A custom header

Here's an example of what an Access-Control-Allow-Headers header might look like. It indicates that in addition to the CORS-safelisted request headers, a custom header named X-Custom-Header is supported by CORS requests to the server.

Access-Control-Allow-Headers: X-Custom-Header

Multiple headers

This example shows Access-Control-Allow-Headers when it specifies support for multiple headers.

Access-Control-Allow-Headers: X-Custom-Header, Upgrade-Insecure-Requests

Bypassing additional restrictions

Although CORS-safelisted request headers are always allowed and don't usually need to be listed in Access-Control-Allow-Headers, listing them anyway will circumvent the additional restrictions that apply.

Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Accept

Example preflight request

Let's look at an example of a preflight request involving Access-Control-Allow-Headers.

Request

First, the request. The preflight request is an OPTIONS request which includes some combination of the three preflight request headers: Access-Control-Request-Method, Access-Control-Request-Headers, and Origin, such as:

OPTIONS /resource/foo
Access-Control-Request-Method: DELETE
Access-Control-Request-Headers: origin, x-requested-with
Origin: https://foo.bar.org

Response

If the server allows CORS requests to use the DELETE method, it responds with an Access-Control-Allow-Methods response header, which lists DELETE along with the other methods it supports:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Length: 0
Connection: keep-alive
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: https://foo.bar.org
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: POST, GET, OPTIONS, DELETE
Access-Control-Max-Age: 86400

If the requested method isn't supported, the server will respond with an error.

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• Access-Control-Allow-Origin
• Access-Control-Expose-Headers
• Access-Control-Allow-Methods
• Access-Control-Request-Headers