exit
For automatic updates of the browser database you can find a script here: http://www.phcomp.co.uk/downloads.php#php
Install and run out of cron.
get_browser
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
get_browser — Tells what the user's browser is capable of
Description
Attempts to determine the capabilities of the user's browser, by looking up the browser's information in the browscap.ini file.
Parameters
- user_agent
-
The User Agent to be analyzed. By default, the value of HTTP User-Agent header is used; however, you can alter this (i.e., look up another browser's info) by passing this parameter.
You can bypass this parameter with a NULL value.
- return_array
-
If set to TRUE, this function will return an array instead of an object.
Return Values
The information is returned in an object or an array which will contain various data elements representing, for instance, the browser's major and minor version numbers and ID string; TRUE/FALSE values for features such as frames, JavaScript, and cookies; and so forth.
The cookies value simply means that the browser itself is capable of accepting cookies and does not mean the user has enabled the browser to accept cookies or not. The only way to test if cookies are accepted is to set one with setcookie(), reload, and check for the value.
ChangeLog
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 4.3.2 | The optional parameter return_array was added. |
Examples
Example #1 Listing all information about the users browser
<?php
echo $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] . "\n\n";
$browser = get_browser(null, true);
print_r($browser);
?>
The above example will output something similar to:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3 Array ( [browser_name_regex] => ^mozilla/5\.0 (windows; .; windows nt 5\.1; .*rv:.*) gecko/.* firefox/0\.9.*$ [browser_name_pattern] => Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; ?; Windows NT 5.1; *rv:*) Gecko/* Firefox/0.9* [parent] => Firefox 0.9 [platform] => WinXP [browser] => Firefox [version] => 0.9 [majorver] => 0 [minorver] => 9 [css] => 2 [frames] => 1 [iframes] => 1 [tables] => 1 [cookies] => 1 [backgroundsounds] => [vbscript] => [javascript] => 1 [javaapplets] => 1 [activexcontrols] => [cdf] => [aol] => [beta] => 1 [win16] => [crawler] => [stripper] => [wap] => [netclr] => )
Notes
Note: In order for this to work, your browscap configuration setting in php.ini must point to the correct location of the browscap.ini file on your system.
browscap.ini is not bundled with PHP, but you may find an up-to-date » php_browscap.ini file here.
While browscap.ini contains information on many browsers, it relies on user updates to keep the database current. The format of the file is fairly self-explanatory.
add a note
User Contributed Notesget_browser
addw at phcomp dot co dot uk
19-Aug-2008 08:59
19-Aug-2008 08:59
The Great God Om
05-May-2008 07:23
05-May-2008 07:23
Regexes to extract browser name and version info from a user agent string. If it doesn't find a browser name from the "subclass" list it tries the "superclass" list.
<?
$subclass = "MSIE,Firefox,Konqueror,Safari,Opera,
Netscape,Navigator,Lynx,Amaya,Omniweb";
$superclass = "Gecko,Mozilla,Mosaic,Webkit";
$subclassregex = "(?:" . str_replace(",",")|(?:",$subclass) . ")";
$superclassregex = "(?:" . str_replace(",",")|(?:",$subclass) . ")";
$browser_name = "unrecognized";
$browser_majorversion = 0;
$browser_fullversion = "0.0";
$bsuperclassmatch = FALSE;
$bsubclassmatch = preg_match("/(?<browser>" . $subclassregex . ")(?:\D*)(?<majorversion>\d*)
(?<subversion>(?:\.\d*)*)/i", $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], $matches);
if (!$bsubclassmatch){
$bsuperclassmatch = preg_match("/(?<browser>" . $superclassregex . ")(?:\D*)(?<majorversion>\d*)
(?<subversion>(?:\.\d*)*)/i", $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], $matches);
}
if ($bsubclassmatch||$bsuperclassmatch){
$browser_name = strtolower($matches["browser"]);
$browser_majorversion = (int)$matches["majorversion"];
$browser_fullversion = $matches["majorversion"].$matches["subversion"];
if (!strcasecmp($browser_name, "Safari")){
$safarimatch = preg_match("/Version\/(?<majorversion>\d*)
(?<subversion>(?:\.\d*)*)/i", $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], $safarimatches);
if ($safarimatch){
$browser_majorversion = (int)$safarimatches["majorversion"];
$browser_fullversion = $safarimatches["majorversion"].$safarimatches["subversion"];
}
}
}
?>
ck+php dot net at animepaper dot net
04-Jan-2008 08:25
04-Jan-2008 08:25
latest update for php_browscap.ini
should be download at http://browsers.garykeith.com/stream.asp?PHP_BrowsCapINI
for others version (i.e: xml, csv etc)
http://browsers.garykeith.com/faq.asp
jesdisciple [at] gmail -dawt- com
19-Nov-2007 04:13
19-Nov-2007 04:13
Use this to ensure that the costly call in its standard form never needs to be repeated:
<?php
function getBrowser(){
static $browser;//No accident can arise from depending on an unset variable.
if(!isset($browser)){
$browser = get_browser($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
}
return $browser;
}
?>
Steffen
19-Oct-2007 11:59
19-Oct-2007 11:59
Keep in mind that get_browser(); really slows down your application. It takes about 22 ms to execute on an idle server with Ubuntu Linux, Apache 2, PHP 5.1.3.
digibrisk at gmail dot NOSPAM dot SPAMNO dot com
06-Oct-2007 01:20
06-Oct-2007 01:20
If the "browscap" directive isn't set in your server's php.ini, then an error warning is shown. Just in case, you could make a call to ini_get() to check if the browscap directive is set before using browser_get().
<?php
if(ini_get("browscap")) {
$browser = get_browse(null, true);
}
?>
mike at mike-griffiths dot co dot uk
23-Jul-2007 10:41
23-Jul-2007 10:41
You should not rely on just this for cross-browser compatibility issues. Good practice would be to include HTML if-statements for IE stylesheets as well as dynamically checking the browser type.
ansar dot ahmed at impelsys dot com
22-Mar-2007 10:01
22-Mar-2007 10:01
We are using get_browser() function for useragent Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows NT) the get_browser function is returning as Default Browser and Platform = unknown.
So i added this to my browscap.ini manually:
[Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows NT)]
Parent=IE 4.01
Platform=WinNT
sam
22-Oct-2006 11:09
22-Oct-2006 11:09
I thought this function might be useful to those without access to the php.ini file (such as those on a shared hosting system):
function php_get_browser($agent = NULL){
$agent=$agent?$agent:$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
$yu=array();
$q_s=array("#\.#","#\*#","#\?#");
$q_r=array("\.",".*",".?");
$brows=parse_ini_file("php_browscap.ini",true);
foreach($brows as $k=>$t){
if(fnmatch($k,$agent)){
$yu['browser_name_pattern']=$k;
$pat=preg_replace($q_s,$q_r,$k);
$yu['browser_name_regex']=strtolower("^$pat$");
foreach($brows as $g=>$r){
if($t['Parent']==$g){
foreach($brows as $a=>$b){
if($r['Parent']==$a){
$yu=array_merge($yu,$b,$r,$t);
foreach($yu as $d=>$z){
$l=strtolower($d);
$hu[$l]=$z;
}
}
}
}
}
break;
}
}
return $hu;
}
define the location of php_browscap.ini wherever you want
always returns an array, same functionality as get_browser(NULL,true)
Hope someone finds it useful!
st DOT jonathan AT gmail DOT com
02-Oct-2006 08:36
02-Oct-2006 08:36
Here is a class I've created that supports an external browscap.ini file (configuration independent) and works faster than get_browser on multiple queries.
http://garetjax.info/projects/browscap/
adspeed.com
02-Sep-2005 06:06
02-Sep-2005 06:06
Here is what we do to fix the parsing error messages for php_browscap.ini downloaded from Gary's website.
<?php
// fix the browsecap.ini for php
$v= file_get_contents('php_browscap.ini');
$v= preg_replace("/\r/","",$v);
$v= preg_replace('/="(.*)"/i','=\\1',$v);
$v= preg_replace("/platform=(.*)/i","platform=\"\\1\"",$v);
$v= preg_replace("/parent=(.*)/i","parent=\"\\1\"",$v);
$v= preg_replace("/minorver=(.*)/i","minorver=\"\\1\"",$v);
$v= preg_replace("/majorver=(.*)/i","majorver=\"\\1\"",$v);
$v= preg_replace("/version=(.*)/i","version=\"\\1\"",$v);
$v= preg_replace("/browser=(.*)/i","browser=\"\\1\"",$v);
$v= str_replace("[*]","*",$v);
file_put_contents('browscap.ini',$v);
?>
pal at degerstrom dot com
26-Apr-2005 02:13
26-Apr-2005 02:13
This might be useful for some until the Gary Keith updates his library. I added this to my browscap.ini to detect the latest Safari update for Panther, and the new Safari in Tiger:
;;; Added manually 05.04.19 for Safari 1.3
[Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; *) AppleWebKit/* (*) Safari/31?]
parent=Safari
version=1.3
majorver=1
minorver=3
;;; Added manually 05.04.26 for Safari 2.0 (Shipped with Tiger)
[Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; *) AppleWebKit/* (*) Safari/41?]
parent=Safari
version=2.0
majorver=2
minorver=0
Note: Full $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] for Safari 2 (Tiger) is
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/412 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/412
(Disclaimer: I do not know if the entries above conform to whatever syntax standard Gary uses in his file, but it works fine for me).
Pål Degerstrøm
tectonikNOSPAM at free dot fr
07-Apr-2005 10:17
07-Apr-2005 10:17
Another (short) sequential php script to determine browsers family and version.
<?
// _______
// ----- | CONF. |
// ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
// add new browsers in lower case here, separated
// by spaces - order is important: from left to
// right browser family becomes more precise
$browsers = "mozilla msie gecko firefox ";
$browsers.= "konqueror safari netscape navigator ";
$browsers.= "opera mosaic lynx amaya omniweb";
// _______
// ----- |PROCESS|
// ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
$browsers = split(" ", $browsers);
$nua = strToLower( $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
$l = strlen($nua);
for ($i=0; $i<count($browsers); $i++){
$browser = $browsers[$i];
$n = stristr($nua, $browser);
if(strlen($n)>0){
$GLOBALS["ver"] = "";
$GLOBALS["nav"] = $browser;
$j=strpos($nua, $GLOBALS["nav"])+$n+strlen($GLOBALS["nav"])+1;
for (; $j<=$l; $j++){
$s = substr ($nua, $j, 1);
if(is_numeric($GLOBALS["ver"].$s) )
$GLOBALS["ver"] .= $s;
else
break;
}
}
}
// _______
// ----- | USE |
// ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
echo("<pre>Your browser is: ");
echo($GLOBALS["nav"] . " " . $GLOBALS["ver"] . "</pre>");
?>
source: http://tectonik.free.fr/technos/php/
another%20PHP%20browser%20sniffer.php
hh
28-Jun-2004 08:19
28-Jun-2004 08:19
Another PHP browser detection script that might be of use to you is here:
http://tech.ratmachines.com/downloads/php_browser_detection.php
This script uses a fairly different logic than get_browser, and doesn't worry about things like table/frame ability. This script was being used by mozdev to id Mozilla versions, since it specializes in that kind of specialized id. It also has unix/linux version os iding.
max at phpexpert dot de
26-Mar-2004 03:14
26-Mar-2004 03:14
Be aware of the fact that this function shows what a specific browser might be able to show, but NOT what the user has turned on/off.
So maybe this function tells you that the browser is abel to to javascript even when javascript is turned off by the user.
bishop
05-Aug-2003 07:46
05-Aug-2003 07:46
PHP is sensitive to characters outside the range [ A-Za-z0-9_] as values in .ini files. For example
browser=Opera (Bork Version)
causes PHP to complain, as it doesn't like the parentheses.
If you place quotation marks around the values for all keys in the browscap.ini file, you'll save yourself parsing problems. Do this in eg vi with %s/=\(.*\)/="\1"/g
You could of course use PHP itself to fixup the file. Exercise left to the reader.
verx at implix dot com
09-Dec-2002 10:57
09-Dec-2002 10:57
Please keep in mind that you should somehow (for example in session) cache the required results of get_browser() because it really slows thinks down.
We have experienced that without querying for browser data our scripts would run 120-130% faster. the explanation is that over 200kb long file (browscap.ini) has to be loaded and parsed everytime someone access any page (we need browser results on all pages).
So keep results in session and expect a performance boost.
les at hazlewood dot com
04-Sep-2001 02:57
04-Sep-2001 02:57
phpSniff (noted in a few places above) is absolutely fantastic. I just installed it, and it is a godsend! It now handles all of my session information needed to go in my database. Thanks for you folks who posted that great Sourceforge resource! http://phpsniff.sourceforge.net/
philip at cornado dot com
26-Aug-2001 04:05
26-Aug-2001 04:05
A couple places that may interest you :
* http://phpbuilder.com/columns/tim20000821.php3
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpsniff/
nick at category4 dot com
13-Jun-2001 12:21
13-Jun-2001 12:21
Here's a quick way to test for a Netscape browser. IE and Konqueror and several others call themselves "Mozilla", but they always qualify it with the word "compatible."
$isns = stristr($HTTP_USER_AGENT, "Mozilla") && (!(stristr($HTTP_USER_AGENT, "compatible")));
triad at df dot lth dot se
31-Jul-2000 12:17
31-Jul-2000 12:17
The only way browscap examines the target browser is through the HTTP_USER_AGENT so there is no way you can determine installed plug-ins. The only way to do that is through client-side JavaScripts.