javascript call url from different domain - javascript

I want to post some data via javascript to another domain. Something like:
http://www.othersite.com/submitfunnyname?name=blah
The other site (othersite.com) has a REST interface that you can call (well actually this is a get example) to submit a funny name to them.
Can I do this already with javascript? I'm a little confused on this - I know if that service wants to return some data, I'd need to use something like JSON-P - even though here I'm submitting some data, I guess the service will return some message structure letting me know the result, so it would have to be JSON-P, right?
Thanks

Not a particular expert in JavaScript, but isn't this an example of "cross-site scripting", which is not allowed due to possible security threats?
I believe you need to have all HTTP calls being made to the same server domain as the page. You could have a handler on your own site pass the information on to the othersite.com.

You can either use JSON-P if the site supports it, or you can use your web server as a proxy - by making requests to your server, which will in turn use a library such as cURL to make the actual request to the remote site.

Related

jQuery Ajax get error No Transport with a status 0

I am doing a jquery.ajax() call on one of our pages to fetch a small text file. I see some of the requests (not all) fail with resp.statusText: "No Transport" and resp.status : 0
What does the error mean (No Transport with a resp code of 0). Strangely it works on some browsers, and doesn't work on some. I couldn't find a patter by looking at the user agents of browsers, where it failed.
Any help would be highly appreciated. I am a beginner to javascript and jquery library, let me know if I omitted crucial information.
My use case:
abc.mydomain.com contains jquery.ajax(url:xyz.mydomain.com) call
Most likely it prevents you from firing a request because it things you are trying to access another domain. xyz.mydomain.com !== mydomain.com.
Why that is not allowed?
Read
Use a Web Proxy for Cross-Domain XMLHttpRequest Calls
Why the cross-domain Ajax is a security concern?
An example to why this is a security issue, assume you installed a bad plugin to your browser. If that plugin got the permission, it can read all loaded files to your browser and be able to edit/change/inject content and codes. Then it might send all collected data to designer own server.
... The most common business needs that are easily accomplished with browser plug-ins are: modify default search, add side frames, inject new content into existing webpage ...more
A good practice is to fetch the data thru ajax via JSON, if you are trying to access another site beside the one the script is calling from, then use JSON-P.
Read
JSON-P
JSON-P call to subdomain
Chrome ajax call to subdomain
A common architecture is to call the current domain that the script is loaded from, then use server script to fetch data from the other domain where the other domain will response to the request and return the data.
A code snippets of your function will help us understand your issue more.

Reading contents of an iframe with wikipedia source? [duplicate]

I am trying to implement a simple request to Wikipedia's API using AJAX (XMLHttpRequest). If I type the url in the address bar of Firefox, I get a neat XML, no sweat there. Yet, calling the exact same url with:
// this is my XMLHttpRequest object
httpObjectMain.open("GET", "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=xml&prop=langlinks&lllimit=500&titles=kaas", true);
httpObjectMain.send(null);
returns an empty response. According to FireBug, I get a 200 OK response, but the content is just empty.
I suspect I might be missing something on the header of the GET http request.
Help! (and thanks!)
The Wikipedia API does support JSONP.
Your query string'll become something like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=json&callback=test&prop=langlinks&lllimit=500&titles=kaas
But you'll have to build the jsonp handler (or you can use your favorite library to do it), switch to json output format from the xml you choose and create the callback function to parse the result and do the stuff you need on the page.
The browser will not allow you to send an XHR to another domain other than the one the page is on. This is for security purposes.
One way around this that I have seen is to setup a proxy on the domain the page is hosted on that will pass requests through to the actual api server. See http://ajaxpatterns.org/Cross-Domain_Proxy

Does d3.json() support authentication? If not, what other JavaScript options are available for JSON retrieval?

I am developing an application that needs to gather information from GitHub, so I began looking at their API. My initial thought was to use the d3.json() function to get the data (because it's simple and has done good things for me in the past), but there doesn't appear to be a way for me to authenticate with that function. For example, $ curl -u "username" https://api.github.com is given as an example of basic authentication (from GitHub API--obviously they use curl for their examples).
So, is there a way to do authentication with the d3.json() function? And if not, what are my other options to get the JSON with JavaScript?
Thanks!
Edit:
I'm experimenting now with using jQuery's getJSON method as shown here, because I started getting the error "XMLHttpRequest cannot load url Origin url is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin." Of course, the switch doesn't help with the ability to authenticate, but I can at least get the public data (which is most).
Edit #2:
Has anyone experimented with michael/github or fitzgen/github-api? I'm going to start looking into those.
If you have a PHP script which echos JSON, you can do all authentication server-side. Note that you can also send a GET request to your PHP script, so the way you call your script can be dynamic.

Is it possible to use inject $.post() from address bar?

I have a javascript in which I use $.post() command to post variables to a php file, I have the URL of the php file hardcoded in the same .js file.
I just want to know if it's possible for someone to inject $.post() command from address bar and send invalid data to the PHP file?
if yes, how to prevent or how to detect those invalid data?
Yes, anybody who knows how to code in JavaScript could send an AJAX POST request to your PHP file.
As for how to detect the invalid data, that depends entirely on what makes the data invalid. You'll simply need to check the POST values against whatever criteria you're expecting valid data to meet, and then ignore any requests that don't meet those criteria.
Yes, it's very simple. Attacker can modify, add or remove any JavaScript running in the browser, modify DOM, etc. Tools like Firebug allow anyone to call arbitrary JavaScript from the console. Moreover one can simply use curl to run your server and send arbitrary data.
if yes, how to prevent or how to detect those invalid data?
You must ensure data validity and integrity on the server side. Also you might want to add some security on the server side and do not depend on some JavaScript function being "hidden".
Sure, by prepending the script with the javascript: scheme you can do pretty much anything you want to a site:
javascript:$.post(/* stuff here */)
You should always validate your incoming data on the server side, because not only may someone use the javascript on your site to do this, but they may use other tools, like curl or whatever else that will let you make http requests.

Simple HTML POST without any server scripting, can be done using JS

I want to pass some textbox value strictly using POST from one html page to another...
how can this be done without using any server side language like asp.net or php
can it be done using javascript??
thnx
You can't read POST data in any way on javascript so this is not doable.
Here you can find similar questions:
http://forums.devshed.com/javascript-development-115/read-post-data-in-javascript-1172.html
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?454963-Getting-GET-or-POST-variables-using-JavaScript
This reading can also be interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POST_%28HTTP%29
This expecially suggests why this answer (wikipedia is the source):
GET
Requests a representation of the specified resource. Requests using GET should only retrieve data and should have no other effect.
(This is also true of some other HTTP methods.)[1] The W3C has
published guidance principles on this distinction, saying, "Web
application design should be informed by the above principles, but
also by the relevant limitations."[10] See safe methods below.
POST
Submits data to be processed (e.g., from an HTML form) to the identified resource. The data is included in the body of the request.
This may result in the creation of a new resource or the updates of
existing resources or both.
POST data is added to the request. When you do a GET request the data is added to the url, and that's why you can access it through javascript (and that's why it's not parsed and you have to do it manually). Instead, POST send data directly into the http requests, which is not seen in any way by the html page (which is just a part of what is sent through the http request).
That said, only server side language will receive the full HTTP request, and definitely you can' access it by javascript.
I'm sorry but that is the real answer

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