Lingyu Zhou

If you need small scale cross-domain database

Let’s be honest: sometimes you just want to store some structured data and read it from another domain, without messing with a real backend or complicated APIs. But then, CORS shows up and ruins your fetch-from-anywhere dreams.

Actually, there’s a neat little hack: just use a JavaScript file as your “database.”

Seriously.

How does it work?

You basically create a .js file that contains your data as a JavaScript variable or array. Something like this:

// blogs.js
var blogs = [
  {
    title: "First Post",
    date: "2020-01-01",
    content: "<p>Hello world!</p>"
  },
  {
    title: "Another Post",
    date: "2020-01-15",
    content: "<p>More content here.</p>"
  }
  // ...more entries
];

Then, on any site, even it’s crossing domains, just import your JS file with a script tag:

<script src="https://your.cdn.com/blogs.js"></script>
<script>
// you can basically just use any variable declared in blogs.js!
  blogs.forEach(post => {
    // Do something with post.title, post.content, etc.
  });
</script>

No CORS. No backend. Just data, ready to go.

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Why bother with this?

Pros:

• Super simple, zero backend.
• Works cross-domain thanks to how <script> tags behave (no CORS headaches).
• Perfect for small, static datasets like blog posts, product lists, or demo content.

Cons:

• Not for big data — you’re loading everything at once.
• Data isn’t secure (but, hey, your blog posts are public anyway).
• Editing or updating means re-deploying the JS file.
• Not ideal for user-generated or frequently-changing content.

Still exploring!