CORS Error Fixed in Spring Boot Backend with a React, Angular, or Vue Frontend

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If you’ve ever worked on a Spring Boot backend paired with a React, Angular, or Vue frontend, chances are you’ve run into that dreaded error:

Access to fetch at 'http://localhost:8080/api/data' from origin 'http://localhost:3000' 
has been blocked by CORS policy.

It’s the bane of many frontend-backend integrations — CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) errors that break communication, confuse newcomers, and waste hours of debugging time.

What if fixing it didn’t require a complex setup or custom headers?

Here’s the good news: one clean CORS configuration in Spring Boot can solve all these problems — across dev, staging, and production — without exposing your app to security risks.

Let’s break it down.

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What Is CORS, and Why Does It Block Your Requests?

CORS is a browser security mechanism. It prevents JavaScript on one origin (say, localhost:3000) from making requests to another origin (localhost:8080) unless the server explicitly allows it.

While it protects users from malicious cross-site attacks, it can also block legitimate communication between your frontend and backend during development or in microservice setups.

---

🚫 Common Symptoms of CORS Issues

• Fetch or Axios requests from frontend apps fail
• Preflight (OPTIONS) requests return 403 Forbidden
• Authentication tokens aren’t sent or accepted
• Errors only happen in browsers — not Postman or cURL

The cause? Your Spring Boot backend doesn’t know it’s supposed to allow requests from your frontend origin.

---

The Cleanest Fix: Global CORS Mapping in Spring Boot

The most robust and maintainable way to handle CORS in Spring Boot is by using a WebMvcConfigurer bean.

✅ Add This One Config:

@Configuration
public class WebConfig implements WebMvcConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void addCorsMappings(CorsRegistry registry) {
        registry.addMapping("/**") // Apply to all paths
                .allowedOrigins("http://localhost:3000") // Frontend origin
                .allowedMethods("GET", "POST", "PUT", "DELETE", "OPTIONS")
                .allowedHeaders("*")
                .allowCredentials(true);
    }
}

---

Why This Works

• addMapping("/**"): Applies to all endpoints in your app
• allowedOrigins(...): Only allows requests from your frontend (can be multiple origins)
• allowedMethods(...): Supports all major HTTP verbs
• allowCredentials(true): Allows cookies or Authorization headers to be sent
• allowedHeaders("*"): Accepts any custom headers (like Authorization, Content-Type, etc.)

This configuration lives in a single place, scales well across endpoints, and can be easily extended for multiple environments or microservices.

---

Real-World Example: React + Spring Boot

React app making a request:

fetch("http://localhost:8080/api/products", {
  method: "GET",
  credentials: "include", // Needed if using cookies
  headers: {
    "Content-Type": "application/json"
  }
});

Spring Boot backend returns:

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://localhost:3000
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true

The browseraccepts the response. No CORS error. Request successful.

---

🛡 Security Note

You might be tempted to write:

.allowedOrigins("*")

That will work, but it’s not secure — especially if you’re using allowCredentials(true) (which Spring will reject if * is used).

Use explicit origins (http://localhost:3000, https://yourfrontend.com) to avoid exposing your backend to untrusted sources.

---

Handling Multiple Frontend Origins

For environments like dev, staging, and production:

.allowedOrigins(
    "http://localhost:3000",
    "https://staging.frontend.com",
    "https://www.frontend.com"
)

Or load them from application.properties:

cors.allowed-origins=http://localhost:3000,https://frontend.com

Then bind using @ConfigurationProperties or @Value in your config class.

---

Alternative: Controller-Level CORS (Not Recommended for Large Apps) using @CrossOrigin annotation

You can also add CORS config per controller:

@CrossOrigin(origins = "http://localhost:3000")
@RestController
@RequestMapping("/api")
public class ProductController {
    ...
}

This is fine for small or isolated APIs, but becomes hard to maintain across multiple controllers and environments.

Prefer global config unless you have a specific reason to isolate CORS per controller.

---

Spring Security + CORS: The Common Gotcha

If you’re using Spring Security and still getting CORS errors after adding WebMvcConfigurer, the reason might be that Spring Security is overriding CORS behavior.

✅ Fix:

You must enable CORS in the security filter chain too:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSecurity
public class SecurityConfig {

    @Bean
    public SecurityFilterChain securityFilterChain(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        http
            .cors() // Enables CORS
            .and()
            .csrf(AbstractHttpConfigurer::disable)
            .authorizeHttpRequests()
                .anyRequest().permitAll();

        return http.build();
    }

    @Bean
    public CorsConfigurationSource corsConfigurationSource() {
        CorsConfiguration config = new CorsConfiguration();
        config.setAllowedOrigins(List.of("http://localhost:3000"));
        config.setAllowedMethods(List.of("GET", "POST", "PUT", "DELETE", "OPTIONS"));
        config.setAllowedHeaders(List.of("*"));
        config.setAllowCredentials(true);

        UrlBasedCorsConfigurationSource source = new UrlBasedCorsConfigurationSource();
        source.registerCorsConfiguration("/**", config);
        return source;
    }
}

Important:

• When using Spring Security, @CrossOrigin and WebMvcConfigurer alone won’t work.
• The security filter chain must include cors() and a CorsConfigurationSource.

Debugging CORS Issues

✅ Use Browser DevTools

• Open the Network tab
• Click on the failed request
• Check Response Headers
• Look for missing Access-Control-Allow-Origin or mismatched values

✅ Use cURL with Origin Header

curl -H "Origin: http://localhost:3000" \
     -H "Access-Control-Request-Method: GET" \
     -X OPTIONS http://localhost:8080/api/products -v

If the response doesn’t include the proper CORS headers, the backend is misconfigured.

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Summary: One CORS Config to Rule Them All

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Conclusion

CORS is one of the most misunderstood issues in modern web development — not because it’s complex, but because the fix is often misplaced.

Spring Boot makes it easy to configure CORS the right way. With just one configuration class, it’s possible to:

• Eliminate development-time errors
• Enable secure cross-origin requests
• Scale from local testing to production deployments

No more jumping through hoops or disabling browser security. Just clean, declarative configuration.