Allow Google Chrome to use XMLHttpRequest to load a URL from a local file

Question

When trying to do a HTTP request using XMLHttpRequest from a local file, it basically fails due to Access-Control-Allow-Origin violation.

However, I'm using the local web page myself, so I was wondering if there is any way to make Google Chrome allow these requests, which are from a local file to a URL on the Internet.

E.g., $.get('http://www.google.com/') fails when executing in a local file, but I've scripted the page myself and I'm using it myself, so it would be extremely useful if I could suppress it and load the URL.

So, how can I allow Google Chrome to load URLs using XMLHttpRequest from local files?

Answer 1

startup chrome with --disable-web-security

On Windows:

chrome.exe --disable-web-security

On Mac:

open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/ --args --disable-web-security

This will allow for cross-domain requests.
I'm not aware of if this also works for local files, but let us know !

And mention, this does exactly what you expect, it disables the web security, so be careful with it.

Answer 2

Using --disable-web-security switch is quite dangerous! Why disable security at all while you can just allow XMLHttpRequest to access files from other files using --allow-file-access-from-files switch?

Before using these commands be sure to end all running instances of Chrome.

On Windows:

chrome.exe --allow-file-access-from-files

On Mac:

open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/ --args --allow-file-access-from-files

Discussions of this "feature" of Chrome:

• https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=37586,
• https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=47416,
• https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/v177zA6LCKU

Answer 3

Mac version. From terminal run:

open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/ --args --allow-file-access-from-files

Answer 4

On Ubuntu:

chromium-browser --disable-web-security

For more details/switches:

http://peter.sh/experiments/chromium-command-line-switches/

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