Configuration

Flask-CORS can be configured at four different locations. Configuration values are determined in the following order:

  1. Resource level settings (e.g when passed as a dictionary)
  2. Keyword argument settings
  3. App level configuration settings (e.g. CORS_*)
  4. Default settings

See below for more information.

Configuration options

Configuration options are consistently named across the various locations where they can be set. A configuration option called example can be set with the resource dictionary key example, as the keyword argument example or as the Flask app configuration key CORS_EXAMPLE.

The configuration options recognised by Flask-CORS are:

CORS_ALLOW_HEADERS (List or str)
Headers to accept from the client. Headers in the Access-Control-Request-Headers request header (usually part of the preflight OPTIONS request) matching headers in this list will be included in the Access-Control-Allow-Headers response header.
CORS_ALWAYS_SEND (bool)

Usually, if a request doesn’t include an Origin header, the client did not request CORS. This means we can ignore this request.

However, if this is true, a most-likely-to-be-correct value is still set.

CORS_AUTOMATIC_OPTIONS (bool)
Only applies to the flask_cors.cross_origin() decorator. If True, Flask-CORS will override Flask’s default OPTIONS handling to return CORS headers for OPTIONS requests.
CORS_EXPOSE_HEADERS (List or str)
The CORS spec requires the server to give explicit permissions for the client to read headers in CORS responses (via the Access-Control-Expose-Headers header). This specifies the headers to include in this header.
CORS_INTERCEPT_EXCEPTIONS (bool)
Whether to deal with Flask exception handlers or leave them alone (with respect to CORS headers).
CORS_MAX_AGE (timedelta, int or str)
The maximum time for which this CORS request may be cached. This value is set as the Access-Control-Max-Age header.
CORS_METHODS (List or str)
The method(s) which the allowed origins are allowed to access. These are included in the Access-Control-Allow-Methods response headers to the preflight OPTIONS requests.
CORS_ORIGINS (List, str or re.Pattern)
The origin(s) to allow requests from. An origin configured here that matches the value of the Origin header in a preflight OPTIONS request is returned as the value of the Access-Control-Allow-Origin response header.
CORS_RESOURCES (Dict, List or str)

The series of regular expression and (optionally) associated CORS options to be applied to the given resource path.

If the value is a dictionary, it’s keys must be regular expressions matching resources, and the values must be another dictionary of configuration options, as described in this section.

If the argument is a list, it is expected to be a list of regular expressions matching resources for which the app-wide configured options are applied.

If the argument is a string, it is expected to be a regular expression matching resources for which the app-wide configured options are applied.

CORS_SEND_WILDCARD (bool)
If CORS_ORIGINS is "*" and this is true, then the Access-Control-Allow-Origin response header’s value with be "*" as well, instead of the value of the Origin request header.
CORS_SUPPORTS_CREDENTIALS (bool)

Allows users to make authenticated requests. If true, injects the Access-Control-Allow-Credentials header in responses. This allows cookies and credentials to be submitted across domains.

note:This option cannot be used in conjunction with a “*” origin
CORS_VARY_HEADER: (bool)
Enables or disables the injection of the Vary response header is set to Origin. This informs clients that our CORS headers are dynamic and cannot be cached.

Default values

  • CORS_ALLOW_HEADERS: “*”
  • CORS_ALWAYS_SEND: True
  • CORS_AUTOMATIC_OPTIONS: True
  • CORS_EXPOSE_HEADERS: None
  • CORS_INTERCEPT_EXCEPTIONS: True
  • CORS_MAX_AGE: None
  • CORS_METHODS: [”GET”, “HEAD”, “POST”, “OPTIONS”, “PUT”, “PATCH”, “DELETE”]
  • CORS_ORIGINS: “*”
  • CORS_RESOURCES: r”/*”
  • CORS_SEND_WILDCARD: False
  • CORS_SUPPORTS_CREDENTIALS: False
  • CORS_VARY_HEADER: True

Locations

Resource level settings

You can specify CORS options on a resource level of granularity by passing a dictionary as the resources keyword argument when instantiating the flask_cors.CORS object (or when calling init_app on it), mapping paths to a set of options.

Keyword argument settings

For options matching all resources, it’s also possible to simply set the configuration options using keyword arguments when instantiating the flask_cors.CORS object (or when calling init_app on it).

App level configuration settings

It’s good practice to keep your application configuration settings in one place. This is also possible with Flask-CORS using the same configuration options in the Flas application’s config object.

Default settings

Finally, every setting has a default value as well.