Browser Detection

Avochelm

Hello, I'm after a real simple bit of code that will store the name of the client's browser in a variable so that I can use it like below:

if ($browserName=="MSIE") {print "string1";}
else {print "string2";}}

I've looked, but without success. Any help would be great! 😃

drag0n

If you going to do this on PHP 4.X, you can just print
$HTTP_USER_AGENT but it would produce data that would be hard to sort, so you need to do some regex on it and you should be fine. ereg()

renaun

$_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"]

is the PHP variable that holds the browser information. A easy way to see this and other variables is to create a file and put this code in it.

<?php 
phpinfo(); 
?>

Runs this page and you'll see a section called 'PHP Variables'. This will give you an idea of the superglobals and what values they hold.

Now how you go about parsing this variables contents to get what browser it is I dont have an easy way, but it could be done fairly simple if you knew the values of the different browsers. Here are two examples:

This is a Mozilla 1.5 value:

$_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"]	Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007

This is a IE 6 value:

$_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"] Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 1.0.3705)

I bet somebody has a list of values for different browsers. This should help enough to get you looking in the right direction.

Avochelm

http://palomino.webpathways.com/_php/useragent

I have done the whole print thing, but how do I sort out the information so I'm not getting information like "Windows NT 5.1", which I do not need. All I need it the browser name and possibly browser version in seperate varaibles. eg: $browser_ver and $browser_name.

how would this ereg() function help me to do this?

Thanks!

drag0n

ereg("MSIE",$HTTP_USER_AGENT) etc.. lookup ereg

Avochelm

Well, I found http://au.php.net/manual/en/function.ereg, but php.net is rather confusing at times. I used:

if (ereg("MSIE","$HTTP_USER_AGENT")==true) {
  print "string1";
}
else {
  print "string2";
}

But this didn't work when I tested it in Opera (but was fine in NSN) and without knowing how the ereg() function operates, I'm clueless.

And how would I detect if it is MSIE 6.0 or lower? I would have to search for a string that is "MSIE " and where is where I would have to check the version.

Avochelm

Okay, I had everything working perfectly, until I tried to put it into a function. I tried to fix it by putting the HTTP_USER_AGENT part outside of the function, but it didn't like that either.

$MSIE_FLAG=0;
if (ereg("MSIE",$HTTP_USER_AGENT)==true&&ereg("Opera",$HTTP_USER_AGENT)==false) {
  $MSIE_FLAG=1;
}
function AlphaPNG($TAG_SRC,$TAG_W,$TAG_H,$TAG_ALT, $TAG_CLASS) {
  if ($MSIE_FLAG==1) {
    print "string1";
  }
  else {
    print "string2";
  }
}

AlphaPNG("http://palominoweb.com/misc/tests/png/aquaglobe",300,300,"","");

I'm guessing it's a problem with global variables?

seby

much more simple:

if (stristr(getenv('HTTP_USER_AGENT') , 'MSIE'))
{
    echo 'your running internet explorer';
}

if you are want to detect multiple agents just make an array of them.

$agent = array('msie','opera','netscape');

foreach($agent as $useragent)
{
    // code
}

LucidParody

Question -- why does IE have a Mozilla 4.0 value? 😕

Avochelm

Lucid, MSIE, NSN and Mozilla were all based around the Mozilla project.

I tried using if ((stristr(getenv('HTTP_USER_AGENT'),'MSIE')==true)&&(stristr(getenv('HTTP_USER_AGENT'), 'MSIE')==false)) , but this didn't work.

I'm trying to use the && operator without success to exclude Opera.

seby

in that case:

if ((stristr(getenv('HTTP_USER_AGENT') , 'MSIE')) && (!stristr(getenv('HTTP_USER_AGENT') , 'opera')))
{
    // code here for internet explorer only
}

Avochelm

Okay, I finally got it to work. This was the final code that I used:

function AlphaPNG($TAG_SRC,$TAG_W,$TAG_H,$TAG_ALT,$TAG_CLASS) {
  if ($TAG_CLASS=="") {$TAG_CLASS_STRING="";}
  else {$TAG_CLASS_STRING=" class=\"".$TAG_CLASS."\"";}
  if (stristr(getenv('HTTP_USER_AGENT') , 'MSIE')==true&&stristr(getenv('HTTP_USER_AGENT') , 'Opera')==false) {
    print "<div title=\"".$TAG_ALT."\"".$TAG_CLASS_STRING." style=\"width: ".$TAG_W."; height: ".$TAG_H.";
  filter: progid: DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='".$TAG_SRC."', sizingMethod='scale');\"></div>";
  }
  else {
    print "<img src=\"".$TAG_SRC."\" width=\"".$TAG_W."\" height=\"".$TAG_H."\"".$TAG_CLASS_STRING." alt=\"".$TAG_ALT."\" />";
  }
}

AlphaPNG("http://palominoweb.com/misc/tests/png/aquaglobe",300,300,"","");

And can be seen in action here: http://palomino.webpathways.com/_php/useragent

Thanks to all!

Weedpacket

If you've got a browscap.ini file lying around you might also want to look at [man]get_browser[/man].