How to handle CORS in Flask?

While we can use any pair of technologies, we also need to ensure that we take care of certain limitations. One of them is CORS.

In this piece, let’s look at how we can handle CORS in a Flask backend.

Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS)

CORS is a mechanism implemented by browsers to block requests from domains other than the server's one. When a browser makes a request, it adds an origin header to the request message. If it goes to the server of the exact origin, it is allowed by the browser, and if it does not, the browser blocks it.

We have written a more detailed guide on CORS that you can find here.

Handling CORS in Flask Backend

There is already a package that exists to handle CORS in Flask backend. It’s called flask-cors and is used by more than 100k projects.

I will step-by-step guide you on how you can use the flask-cors package to handle CORS in your backend.

→ STEP #1

I hope you have a Flask backend set up. Open the terminal and type in the following command. Once you are done, press Enter.

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pip install flask-cors

This command will download and install flask-cors package in your project.

→ STEP #2

Now open your server’s entry point file and import flask-cors at the top. Here is how you can do it:

py
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from flask_cors import CORS

→ STEP #3

It is simple to use this package. Just copy-paste the following code in your server’s entry point file:

py
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from flask import Flask
from flask_cors import CORS
app = Flask(__name__)
CORS(app)

This will enable CORS for all domains and all routes.

Wrap Up

This was a brief introduction to handling CORS in your Flask server. You can read the documentation of flask-cors package for a more in-depth idea.