Jquery $.ajax fails in IE on cross domain calls

Question

I am doing a cross domain request using $.ajax. It works on Firefox and Chrome, but does not issue a call on IE 7 or 8. Can anyone tell me what's wrong with the following?

1. I have used JSON and JSONP (which I stopped using, due to some custom restrictions).
2. I am already using Allow-access-control-origin header on my site. (Without those, Chrome and Firefox were not making successful requests.)
3. I have already tried https://developer.mozilla.org/en/http_access_control

Code:

$.ajax({
    type: 'GET',
    url: "http://anotherdomain.com/Service/GetControl?id=" + zoneID,
    cache: false,
    contentType: "application/x-www-form-urlencoded",
    async: false,
    beforeSend: function (request) {
        //alert('before send');
        //request.setRequestHeader("X-Requested-With", "XMLHttpRequest");
        //request.setRequestHeader("X-PINGOTHER", "pingpong");
    } ,
    success: function (data, status) {
        //alert("Data returned :" + data);
        //alert("Status :" + status);
        if (status == "success" && data != "")
            $("#" + div.id).append(data);
        else
            $("#" + div.id).attr("style", "display:none;");
    },
    error: function (XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) {
        alert(textStatus);
        alert(errorThrown);
    }
});

I have tried various tips present on multiple sites, but no luck yet.

Answer 1

I have the same problem in IE, I solved it by replacing:

<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.10.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

To

<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.10.2/jquery.min.js"></script>

So basically upgrade your jquery version.

Answer 2

Could you check if the problem with IE relies on not defining security zones to allow cross domain requests? See this microsoft page for an explanation.

OTOH, this page mentions that IE7 and eariler cannot do cross domain calls, but IE8 can, using a different object than XMLHttpRequest, the one JQuery uses. Could you check if XDomainRequest works?

EDIT (2013-08-22)

The second link is dead, so I'm writing here some of its information, taken from the wayback machine:

XDomainRequest Supported: IE8

Rather than implement the CORS version of XMLHttpRequest, the IE team have gone with there own propriety object, named XDomainRequest. The usage of XDomainRequest has been simplified from XMLHttpRequest, by having more events thrown (with onload perhaps being the most important).

This implementation has a few limitations attached to it. For example, cookies are not sent when using this object, which can be a headache for cookie based sessions on the server side. Also, ContentType can not be set, which poses a problem in ASP.NET and possibly other server side languages (see http://www.actionmonitor.co.uk/NewsItem.aspx?id=5).

var xdr = new XDomainRequest();
xdr.onload = function() { alert("READY"); };
xdr.open("GET", "script.html");
xdr.send();

Answer 3

Simply add "?callback=?" (or "&callback=?") to your url:

$.getJSON({
    url:myUrl + "?callback=?",
    data: myData,
    success: function(data){
        /*My function stuff*/        
    }
});

When doing the calls (with everything else set properly for cross-domain, as above) this will trigger the proper JSONP formatting.

More in-depth explanation can be found in the answer here.

Answer 4

Microsoft always ploughs a self-defeating (at least in IE) furrow:

http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2010/05/25/cross-domain-ajax-with-cross-origin-resource-sharing/

CORS works with XDomainRequest in IE8. But IE 8 does not support Preflighted or Credentialed Requests while Firefox 3.5+, Safari 4+, and Chrome all support such requests.

Answer 5

Note, adding

$.support.cors = true;

was sufficient to force $.ajax calls to work on IE8

Answer 6

It's hard to tell due to the lack of formatting in the question, but I think I see two issues with the ajax call.

1) the application/x-www-form-urlencoded for contentType should be in quotes

2) There should be a comma separating the contentType and async parameters.