asp.net mvc - IIS hijacks CORS Preflight OPTIONS request

Question

I am making a CORS POST request and setting the Content-Type header to json. This triggers a Preflight OPTIONS request to fire (this is good and expected)

This OPTIONS request is responded to with a 200 OK but this isn't coming from my WebAPI application.

I have a custom Message Handler in place and it never get's hit so the request is getting responded to by IIS prior to hitting ASP.NET it seems.

I have found several posts on the subject and they say the following

1. Make sure WebDav is uninstalled / removed / disabled - DONE

2. Make sure the OPTIONSVerbHandler is removed / changed to use aspnet_isapi.dll - TRIED BOTH

3. Make sure the extensionlessURLHandler includes the OPTIONS verb - DONE

However, my options request is still getting hijacked. By that I mean, IIS responds with at 200 OK but isn't including an Access-Control-Allow-Origin header in the response. It isn't including this header because it is never getting to my WebAPI CORS code that would set this header.

The two best posts I could find that sound like my issue are

here: JQuery stuck at CORS preflight and IIS ghost response

and here: http://brockallen.com/2012/10/18/cors-iis-and-webdav/

I have tried turning on Failed Request tracing (FERB) in IIS and set it to trace all 200 status codes. I don't ever see the options request being logged... Not sure if this means FERB doesn't track OPTIONS requests or if I need to change something in the FERB settings to make it track OPTIONS requests, Or if this is a clue to what my problem is?

This is ASP.NET WebAPI 2.0 running on IIS 7.5 (Also tested on IIS 8 and IISExpress with same results) Doesn't matter what browser (Chrome, FF, and IE all fail the same way)

I have tried everything I can find on the subject and still can't fix my problem.

Help me StackOverflow, you're my only hope.

Answer 1

A couple of things you can try here, all web.config related, firstly modify your modules element to include the attribute runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true", as below:

<modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true">
    <remove name="WebDavModule" />
</modules>

Then set your handlers to the below:

<handlers>
   <remove name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-ISAPI-4.0_32bit" />
   <remove name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-ISAPI-4.0_64bit" />
   <remove name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0" />
   <remove name="WebDav" />
   <remove name="OPTIONSVerbHandler" />
   <add name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-ISAPI-4.0_32bit" path="*." verb="GET,HEAD,POST,DEBUG,PUT,DELETE,PATCH,OPTIONS" modules="IsapiModule" scriptProcessor="%windir%Microsoft.NETFrameworkv4.0.30319aspnet_isapi.dll" preCondition="classicMode,runtimeVersionv4.0,bitness32" responseBufferLimit="0" />
   <add name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-ISAPI-4.0_64bit" path="*." verb="GET,HEAD,POST,DEBUG,PUT,DELETE,PATCH,OPTIONS" modules="IsapiModule" scriptProcessor="%windir%Microsoft.NETFramework64v4.0.30319aspnet_isapi.dll" preCondition="classicMode,runtimeVersionv4.0,bitness64" responseBufferLimit="0" />
   <add name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0" path="*." verb="GET,HEAD,POST,DEBUG,PUT,DELETE,PATCH,OPTIONS" type="System.Web.Handlers.TransferRequestHandler" preCondition="integratedMode,runtimeVersionv4.0" />
</handlers>

This should do the trick, but if it doesn't, as a last resort you can force IIS to output the correct headers with the below:

  <system.webServer>
    <httpProtocol>
      <customHeaders>
        <add name="Access-Control-Allow-Origin" value="*" />
        <add name="Access-Control-Allow-Methods" value="GET,PUT,POST,DELETE,OPTIONS" />
        <add name="Access-Control-Allow-Headers" value="Content-Type" />
      </customHeaders>
    </httpProtocol>
  </system.webServer>

Be wary of the wildcard value, you should really set this to the domain name that your site will be hosted on.