This post will discuss how to configure CORS filter for a web application with Spring Boot.

CORS stands for Cross-Origin Resource Sharing, and it is a mechanism that allows web browsers to request resources from different origins (domains, protocols, or ports) than the one that serves the web page. CORS is useful for enabling cross-domain communication and accessing web services that are hosted on different servers. However, CORS also poses a security risk, as it can expose sensitive data or allow malicious requests to bypass the same-origin policy. Therefore, CORS needs to be configured properly on both the client and the server side.

 
In Spring Boot, there are several ways to configure CORS filter for a web application, depending on the level of granularity and flexibility we need. Here are some of the possible methods:

1. Using @CrossOrigin Annotation

This is a simple and declarative way to enable CORS for specific controller classes or methods. The @CrossOrigin annotation can be applied at the class level or the method level, and it supports various attributes to customize the CORS configuration, such as origins, methods, allowedHeaders, exposedHeaders, allowCredentials, or maxAge. Here’s an example:

2. Using WebMvcConfigurer Interface

This is a more global and programmatic way to enable CORS for the entire web application. The WebMvcConfigurer interface provides a method called addCorsMappings() that allows us to register CORS configurations for specific URL patterns. We can implement this interface in a configuration class and override this method to customize the CORS filter. Here’s an example:

3. Using CorsFilter Class

This is a more flexible and low-level way to enable CORS for the entire web application. The CorsFilter class is a generic filter that implements the CORS specification and can be registered as a bean in the application context. The CorsFilter class takes a CorsConfigurationSource as a constructor argument, which provides the CORS configuration for each request. We can create a custom CorsConfigurationSource bean that returns a CorsConfiguration instance based on some logic or criteria. Here’s an example:

That’s all about configuring CORS filter for a web application with Spring Boot.