How to POST to NetSuite custom record from external site?

Question

I'm trying to integrate a very small custom web application with NetSuite. I want a custom record to be created in NetSuite whenever a user clicks a button in my web application.

I have written a RESTlet that works with the REST API Testing chrome extension. I have successfully created records through that chrome extension.

However, when I try to POST from my web application, I get this error:

"Response to preflight request doesn't pass access control check: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. Origin 'null' is therefore not allowed access. The response had HTTP status code 401."

How can I POST to NetSuite with a RESTlet from an external site? Should I even be using a RESTlet or is there a better way?

Answer 1

RESTlets are meant more as a system to system technology. They require authentication and if you are doing that from a public app your credentials will be compromised.

Netsuite doesn't allow you to set a CORS header so your cross domain integration needs to be via a publicly available suitelet and JSONP.

Since JSONP makes use of get requests you need to make sure your url params end up less than about 2k characters. That's not a standard limit so ymmv

patterns I often use: Client code:

var url = "public suitelet url from deployment screen";
    var params = {
        mode: 'neworder',
        //simple name/value data
    };
    $.ajax({
            url: url+"&"+ $.param(params) +"&jsoncallback=?",
            cache:false,
            dataType:'json',
            success: function(jResp){
                if(!jResp.success){
                    if(jResp.message) alert(jResp.message);
                    return;
                }
                // act on the results
            }
    });

A library function in the suitelet source file.

function _sendJSResponse(request, response, respObject){
    response.setContentType('JAVASCRIPT');
    //response.setHeader('Access-Control-Allow-Origin', '*');
    var callbackFcn = request.getParameter("jsoncallback")  || request.getParameter('callback');
    if(callbackFcn){
        response.writeLine( callbackFcn + "(" + JSON.stringify(respObject) + ");");
    }else response.writeLine( JSON.stringify(respObject) );
}

and then a Suitelet function

function service(request, response){
    ... do some work and generate a response
    var returnObj = {
        success:true,
        message: '',
        result:result
    };

    _sendJSResponse(request, response, returnObj);
}