CODEWITHSUNDEEP
getxmlhttprequestcors
Louis Maddox
Louis Maddox

Reputation: 5576

Does CrossRef Search API support cross-domain requests?

The CrossRef Search API (docs here) provides citation information from DOI identifiers. I tried using it to get this info but am oddly getting 404 responses.

The headers I set were

Content-type: application/json
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST, OPTIONS
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Content-Type
Access-Control-Max-Age: 86400

I get the same result from this appspot tester, so I wouldn't think it's my code.

Can anyone advise how I could get it working? It works just fine from their own domain.

It's possible they don't allow cross-domain at all, but I'm not sure if/how I could check that.

Reproducible example:

function doiInfo(doi) {
    var doienc = encodeURIComponent(doi);
    var doiXHR;
    window.XMLHttpRequest ? doiXHR=new XMLHttpRequest() : doiXHR=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");

    doiXHR.onreadystatechange=function()
    {
    if (doiXHR.readyState==4 && doiXHR.status==200)
    {
      console.log(doiXHR.responseText);
    } else if (doiXHR.readyState==4) {
        // something went wrong
    }
    }

    doiXHR.open("GET", "http://search.crossref.org/dois?q=" + doienc, true);
    doiXHR.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/json;");
    doiXHR.setRequestHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "*");
    doiXHR.setRequestHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "GET, POST, OPTIONS");
    doiXHR.setRequestHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "Content-Type");
    doiXHR.setRequestHeader("Access-Control-Max-Age", "86400"); // cache for 1 day

//    doiXHR.withCredentials = "true";
    doiXHR.send();
}
doiInfo('10.1002/bies.201000071')

In the browser console from crossref.org I get

 [
  {
    "doi": "http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/bies.201000071",
    "score": 18.623272,
    "normalizedScore": 100,
    "title": "The phage-host arms race: Shaping the evolution of microbes",
    "fullCitation": "Adi Stern, Rotem Sorek, 2010, 'The phage-host arms race: Shaping the evolution of microbes', <i>BioEssays</i>, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 43-51",
    "coins": "ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&amp;rft_id=info%3Adoi%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fdx.doi.org%2F10.1002%2Fbies.201000071&amp;rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fcrossref.org%3Asearch&amp;rft.atitle=The+phage-host+arms+race%3A+Shaping+the+evolution+of+microbes&amp;rft.jtitle=BioEssays&amp;rft.date=2010&amp;rft.volume=33&amp;rft.issue=1&amp;rft.spage=43&amp;rft.epage=51&amp;rft.aufirst=Adi&amp;rft.aulast=Stern&amp;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&amp;rft.genre=article&amp;rft.au=Adi+Stern&amp;rft.au=+Rotem+Sorek",
    "year": "2010"
  }
]

Running it from my website (not https) I get

OPTIONS http://search.crossref.org/dois?q=10.1002%2Fbies.201000071 404 (Not Found) XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://search.crossref.org/dois?q=10.1002%2Fbies.201000071. Invalid HTTP status code 404

The GET/OPTIONS issue aside, it definitely seems to get a 404 on the page, which doesn't seem right.

I think you can get around it with an iframe and window.postMessage(?) but that sounds messy.

Please comment if I can provide more details and I'll be happy to, doesn't seem like anyone's done this before online - hopefully not because it's impossible!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 338

Answers (1)

Joram
Joram

Reputation: 64

Answering the title of your question: yes it allows Cross-Origin requests. A 404 indicates a wrong resource. Cross-origin problems would give you a 401.

The allow-origin header indicates that the resource can be accessed from all locations. Take a look at my working example: http://pastebin.com/8W23P48Z

Upvotes: 1

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