pmxdr

pmxdr is a cross-domain XHR JavaScript library standard that doesn't rely on any proprietary technologies like Flash, but instead uses the HTML5 postMessage API to make requests. pmxdr stands for postMessage cross-domain requester. It respects most applicable HTTP access control headers, even on browsers that don't support them but do support postMessage, like Firefox 3. There is one drawback though--it requires that a pmxdr host be on the target domain (at /pmxdr/api). If you would like to implement your own pmxdr client library or pmxdr host library, please refer to the pmxdr standard at the bottom of this README.

Supported Browsers

The following browsers support pmxdr. If you know of a browser that works but is not listed, comment on this page and tell me the browser.

• Gecko 1.9.x
  • Firefox 3
  • Firefox 3.1/3.5
  • Seamonkey 2
  • Songbird 0.3+
  • Flock 2
  • Epiphany 2
• Google Chrome 2
• Opera
  • Opera 10
  • Opera 9.5+ with MessageEvent.origin getter fix (http://-only, no https://)
• Safari 4
• IE 8

Demo

You can try out a demo of it in action here. In two of the tests in the demo, code.eligrey.com requests some JSON data (which turns out not to just be some JSON, but some JavaScript code too) from eligrey.com without using the current insecure method of inserting a script tag and handing all control over to the other website. If the demo was done with conventional <script> tags, the page's title would have been sent to a (nonexistent) website that harvests page titles.

Reference Client Library

The reference client library uses the following object-oriented API. Pass a pmxdr instance's request method an object containing any of these properties or an array of such objects to do mutiple requests to utilize pmxdr. To create a pmxdr instance, create a variable as new pmxdr(host) where host is any URI from the website you want to request (pmxdr figures out where the API is located automatically). If you don't need a reusable pmxdr instance (ie. only plan on making one request), just use pmxdr.request. If you use an instance, the uri parameter can be a relative URI. The following doesn't apply to pmxdr.request, only reusable instances: Only call the request method on an instance once the interface iframe has loaded, which you can find out when instance calls it's onload method once it's loaded if you set it. To start loading the instance, you call it's init method. To remove the interface frame, you call it's unload method. The following are parameters supported in a request object. Passing a string instead of an object with parameters is the same as passing an object with only the uri parameter defined as the string.

• method: (Optional) Case-insensitive string representing the HTTP request method. Defaults to an instance's defaultRequestMethod (which defaults to pmxdr.prototype.defaultRequestMethod and is usually "GET" but can be changed).
• uri: (Required) The full absolute URI to be requested.
• headers: (Optional) An object with properties and values for headers to be sent. Example: {"X-User": "eli", "X-Real-Referrer": location.href}.
• data: (Optional) Data to send in a request. This is where you put the body of a POST request.
• callback: (Optional) Function to be called when request is complete.
• contentType: (Optional) Equivalent to setting the "Content-Type" header in the headers field. Defaults to the instance's defaultContentType property. If you want to simulate a form POST request, don't forget to set this to application/x-www-form-urlencoded.
• timeout: (Optional) Time in milliseconds that the request has to finish. If the request does not finish before the timeout, the callback (if any) is sent a TIMEOUT error code. Defaults to an instance's defaultTimeout (which defaults to pmxdr.prototype.defaultTimeout).

pmxdr.prototype.defaultTimeout is not set by default in this client library but you can set it to have a global default timeout. To completely remove pmxdr, call its destruct method, which removes all event listeners and deletes the pmxdr variable. This does not delete any still-existing interface frames so don't forget to unload them when you are done to save memory.

Reference Host Library

The reference host library fully supports the pmxdr standard. It needs no configuration and defaults to the most restrictive settings of always requiring Access-Control-Allow-Origin and not trusting any origin by default, including the same website itself. When you set up the host library, it must be accessible via http://your-domain/pmxdr/api.

The Response Object

The response object will be in this format:

/* req == XMLHttpRequest response */
{
    pmxdr      : true,
    data       : req.responseText,
    headers    : {}, // all HTTP headers (with header names lower-case)
    status     : req.status, // 200, 404, etc.
    statusText : req.statusText, // "OK", "Not Found", etc.
    id         : some_id // this will be the same as the id sent in the request object
}

Examples

// requesting domain is eligrey.com
// example.com/search is a fictional search service that supports pmxdr requests
pmxdr.request({
  uri     : "http://example.com/search.json?q=foo",
  callback: handleResponse
});

function handleResponse(response) {
  if (!response.error) { // request successfull
      print(response.headers["content-type"]) // prints "application/json"
      print(response.data)
      // prints [{"name":"foo Inc","url":"http://foo.example/","description":"the world leader in foo"},{"name":"foo experts","url":"http://foobar.example/","description":"we are experts on foo!"}]
  } else print("Error: " + response.error);
}

This creates a temporary iframe which is deleted after the response is recieved with an src of "http://example.com/pmxdr/api" and sends the following JSON-encoded object to it using postMessage (the id is randomly generated with collision-detection):

{pmxdr: true, method: "GET", uri: "http://example.com/search.json?q=foo", id:"5832485502879199"} The pmxdr host (example.com/pmxdr/api) requests http://example.com/search.json?q=foo using XHR and the headers that it receives include the following: 

Content-Type: application/json
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://example.com, http://eligrey.com, http://an-example-com-affiliate.com
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: GET, POST

Note: Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * would also work but would allow all requests.

The pmxdr host then checks to see if the original requesting window is permitted to get the data from the HTTP request. If the original requesting window is permitted to view this data, it sends back the following response:

{pmxdr: true, headers:{"content-type":"application/json" /*, ...the rest of the headers...*/}, status: 200, data: '[{"name":"foo Inc","url":"http://foo.example/","description":"the world leader in foo"},{"name":"foo experts","url":"http://foobar.example/","description":"we are experts on foo!"}]', id:"5832485502879199"} Now that you got the basics, let's do a little more advanced example which uses example.com's more advanced fictional "search2" interface using a pmxdr instance and then doing two requests.: 

Using instances

var pmxdrInstance = new pmxdr("http://example.com");
pmxdrInstance.onload = function() {
    this.request([{
        method  : "post",
        uri     : "/search2.json",
        data    : "q=foo",
        callback: handleResponse,
        headers : {"X-Service-Key": "hunter2", "X-User": "eli", "X-Real-Referrer": location.href},
        timeout : 30000 /* == 30 seconds*/
    }]);
}
function handleResponse(response) {
    // do stuff with response
    pmxdrInstance.unload();
}
pmxdrInstance.init();

This creates a temporary iframe which is deleted after the response is recieved OR after the timeout (30000ms, 30 seconds) with an src of "http://example.com/pmxdr/api" and sends the following JSON-encoded object to it using postMessage:

{pmxdr: true, method: "post", uri: "http://example.com/search2.json", data: "q=foo", headers: {"X-Service-Key": "hunter2", "X-User": "eli"}, id:"9130873488166656"}

The pmxdr host (example.com/pmxdr/api) requests http://example.com/search/ using an XHR POST request with the data, "q=foo". It also sends the headers, X-Service-Key and X-User. The Content-Type header. The headers that it receives include the following:

Content-Type: application/json
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: POST

The pmxdr host then checks to see if the original requesting window is permitted to get the data and returns this if it is allowed:

{pmxdr: true, headers:{"content-type":"application/json" /*, ...the rest of the headers...*/}, data:'[{"name":"foo Inc","url":"http://foo.example/","description":"the world leader in foo"},{"name":"foo experts","url":"http://foobar.example/","description":"we are experts on foo!"}]', status:200, statusText:"OK" id:"9130873488166656"}

If the request is denied due to having a disallowed origin, it would return this:

{pmxdr: true, error: "DISALLOWED_ORIGIN", id:"9130873488166656", status:200, statusText:"OK"}

This example shows how to use the response headers:

pmxdr.request({ // Print the server of pmxdr host
  uri       : "http://pmxdr-host-enabled-website.example/",
  callback  : function(response){ print(response.headers.server) },
})

Standard Error Codes

• DISALLOWED_ORIGIN: The host was not allowed to request the resource.
• DISALLOWED_REQUEST_METHOD: Request method (ie. GET, POST, etc.) was not allowed.
• LOAD_ERROR: The requested resource did not return a 2xx HTTP response.
• UNKNOWN: Unknown error.
• TIMEOUT: Request timed out. Note: This error is not normally sent from the pmxdr host but is usually sent to the callback directly on the client-side. A host may return this error if it wishes to have a timeout.

Miscellaneous

At any point before the callback for a request is called, you may abort the request by calling it's abort method. If you gave an array of requests, call the abort method on the appropriate index:

var request = pmxdr.request("http://example.com/foo.html");
request.abort();
// or
var requests = pmxdr.request([
    "http://example.com/foo.html",
    "http://example.com/bar.html"
]);
for (var i=0; i<requests.length; i++) {
    requests[i].abort();
}

This interface also includes a callback method, which you can call to call the callback and remove the request before receiving the response.

Configuration

The client library has the following public configuration variables:

• pmxdr.originRegex: The regular expression used to extract an HTML 5 "origin" from a URI. The default of ^([\w-]+:\/*\[?[\w\.:-]+\]?(?::\d+)?).*/ is very flexible and even works on IPv6 addresses. If you must edit it, make sure RegExp.$1 is the origin captured, as that's what the pmxdr client library uses.
• pmxdr.prototype.defaultTimeout: Not defined initially. Define this to apply a timeout to all pmxdr calls that don't specify an explicit timeout.
• pmxdr.prototype.defaultRequestMethod: Initially set to "GET". This is the default request method if a request method if not specified in a pmxdr call.
• pmxdr.prototype.defaultContentType: Not defined initially. Define this to specify a default Content-Type header value to send all data with. (ie. application/x-www-form-urlencoded for POST form requests)
• pmxdr.interfaceFrameParent: Parent node where interface frames are temporarily appended to. Initially set to document.documentElement || document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0] || document.body || document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0].
• You can override defaults for a whole pmxdr instance by specifying the property under the instance. For example: var foo=new pmxdr("http://example.com"); foo.defaultTimeout = 60000.

The host library also has a private array named alwaysTrustedOrigins, which can be filled with protocol+host+non-standard port strings and regular expressions. Any website with an origin matching one of the strings or regular expressions in the array is allowed to skip the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header verification. This does not mean that the trusted host is also allowed to skip checks with the Access-Control-Allow-Methods and Access-Control-Allow-Headers headers.

The following is an example configuration of alwaysTrustedOrigins:

var alwaysTrustedOrigins = [ // change to always trusted origins
    /^[\w-]+:(?:\/\/)?([\w\.-]+\.)?eligrey\.com(?::\d+)?$/, // any origin on any protocol that has a domain that ends in eligrey.com
    "http://www.google.com", // only http://www.google.com is allowed, not http://foo.google.com:30/
    /\.example\.net$/, // *.example.net
    /^https?:\/\/([\w\.-]+\.)?example\.com$/ // these will all be allowed: https://example.com, http://example.com, https://*.example.com, http://*.example.com
];

pmxdr standard

The pmxdr (postMessage cross-domain requester) standard defines the standard communication format used by pmxdr clients and hosts via the postMessage interface. You may use this standard to implement your own pmxdr-compliant libraries. The key words "must", "must not", "required", "shall", "shall not", "should", "should not", "recommended", "may", and "optional" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119. pmxdr hosts must always be accessible through the following relative location from a website and should not redirect to another location: /pmxdr/api.

Note: All requests and responses to hosts and clients must be valid JSON format. The order of properties in request and response JSON objects must not affect any aspect of communication between host and client.

Request Format

Requests to pmxdr hosts must be in a valid JSON object. The requests must have all of the following required properties in the root of the JSON object (ie. if "a" is required, it must be at {a}, not {foo:{a}}). All properties must be treated as case-sensitive.

• pmxdr
  • Required property. Must be true.
• id
  • Optional property. Should be a string. It is recommended to make this a unique identification that is not the same as the identification of a request still being processed by the pmxdr host. Must not be null or anything that can == false in JavaScript. If this property is specified in a request, the host must define an identical id property in it's response JSON object.
• uri
  • Required property. Should be an absolute or relative location accessible by the pmxdr host. The host must attempt to request this location using an XMLHttpRequest and should parse the following response headers and the origin of the requesting client and determine if the client is allowed to access the resource. Other methods may be used like the alwaysTrustedOrigins array used in the pmxdr host library reference implementation.
    • Access-Control-Allow-Origin
    • Access-Control-Allow-Methods
• method
  • Required property. It must be a string and must be treated as case-insensitive and converted to upper-case by the host. This must be used as the method for the XMLHttpRequest used to request uri.
• data
  • Optional property. It must be a string and it should be sent as the body of an HTTP request if specified in a request.
• headers
  • Optional property. It must be an object. All of it's properties should be strings.

Successful Response Format

A JSON object in this format must be sent if no errors occurred and the requesting origin is allowed to view the response.

• pmxdr
  • Required property. Must be true.
• id
  • If the request object specifies an id property, this property must be identical to that property.
• status
  • This property must be identical to the XMLHttpRequest request's status property.
• statusText
  • This property must be identical to the XMLHttpRequest request's statusText property.
• data
  • Required property. Must be the value of the responseText property of the XMLHttpRequest.
• headers
  • Required property. For every response header, the header name must be converted to lower-case and put as a property in this object with the header's value as the property's value.

Unsuccessful response format

A JSON object in this format must be sent if an error occurred or the requesting origin is allowed to view the response.

• pmxdr
  • Required property. Must be true.
• id
  • If the request object specifies an id property, this property must be identical to that property.
• status
  • This property must be identical to the XMLHttpRequest request's status property.
• statusText
  • This property must be identical to the XMLHttpRequest request's statusText property.
• error
  • Required property. Should be a valid error code from the list of standard error codes below but may be any message. This must be a string and must be upper-case.
  • Standard error codes
    • DISALLOWED_ORIGIN: The request origin was not allowed to request the resource.
    • DISALLOWED_REQUEST_METHOD: Request method (ie. GET, POST, ect.) was not allowed.
    • LOAD_ERROR: The requested resource did not return a 2xx HTTP response.
    • UNKNOWN: Unknown error. If you are lazy or just don't want to let a website know which thing is not allowed, make your host library send this instead of any error.
    • TIMEOUT: Request timed out.

Format Extensions

pmxdr request and response format extensions (extra properties on request and response JSON objects) must be put in an "x" object. For example, the foobar extension would use x.foobar as it's property. The x object must be treated as case sensitive. The following is an example "remaining-requests" response format extension that signifies how many more requests are allowed to be made:

{"pmxdr":true, /*...*/ "x":{"remaining-requests":5}}