1HTTP::BrowserDetect(3)User Contributed Perl DocumentationHTTP::BrowserDetect(3)
2
6 HTTP::BrowserDetect - Determine Web browser, version, and platform from
7 an HTTP user agent string
8
10 version 3.21
11
13 use HTTP::BrowserDetect;
14 my $user_agent_string
16 = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_11_6) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/52.0.2743.116 Safari/537.36';
17 my $ua = HTTP::BrowserDetect->new($user_agent_string);
18 # Print general information
20 print "Browser: $ua->browser_string\n"
21 if $ua->browser_string;
22 print "Version: $ua->browser_version$ua->browser_beta\n"
23 if $ua->browser_version;
24 print "OS: $ua->os_string\n"
25 if $ua->os_string;
26 # Detect operating system
28 if ( $ua->windows ) {
29 if ( $ua->winnt ) {
30 # do something
31 }
32 if ( $ua->win95 ) {
33 # do something
34 }
35 }
36 print "Mac\n" if $ua->macosx;
37 # Detect browser vendor and version
39 print "Safari\n" if $ua->safari;
40 print "MSIE\n" if $ua->ie;
41 print "Mobile\n" if $ua->mobile;
42 if ( $ua->browser_major(4) ) {
43 if ( $ua->browser_minor() > .5 ) {
44 # ...;
45 }
46 }
47 if ( $ua->browser_version() > 4.5 ) {
48 # ...;
49 }
50
52 The HTTP::BrowserDetect object does a number of tests on an HTTP user
53 agent string. The results of these tests are available via methods of
54 the object.
55 For an online demonstration of this module's parsing, you can check out
57 <http://www.browserdetect.org/>
58 This module was originally based upon the JavaScript browser detection
60 code available at
61 <http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/sniffer/browser_type.html>.
62
64 new()
65 HTTP::BrowserDetect->new( $user_agent_string )
66 The constructor may be called with a user agent string specified.
68 Otherwise, it will use the value specified by $ENV{'HTTP_USER_AGENT'},
69 which is set by the web server when calling a CGI script.
70
73 browser()
74 Returns the browser, as one of the following values:
75 chrome, firefox, ie, opera, safari, adm, applecoremedia, blackberry,
77 brave, browsex, dalvik, elinks, links, lynx, emacs, epiphany, galeon,
78 konqueror, icab, lotusnotes, mosaic, mozilla, netfront, netscape, n3ds,
79 dsi, obigo, polaris, pubsub, realplayer, seamonkey, silk, staroffice,
80 ucbrowser, webtv
81 If the browser could not be identified (either because unrecognized or
83 because it is a robot), returns "undef".
84 browser_string()
86 Returns a human formatted version of the browser name. These names are
87 subject to change and are meant for display purposes. This may include
88 information additional to what's in browser() (e.g. distinguishing
89 Firefox from Iceweasel).
90 If the user agent could not be identified, or if it was identified as a
92 robot instead, returns "undef".
93
95 Please note that that the version(), major() and minor() methods have
96 been deprecated as of release 1.78 of this module. They should be
97 replaced with browser_version(), browser_major(), browser_minor(), and
98 browser_beta().
99 The reasoning behind this is that version() method will, in the case of
101 Safari, return the Safari/XXX numbers even when Version/XXX numbers are
102 present in the UserAgent string (i.e. it will return incorrect versions
103 for Safari in some cases).
104 browser_version()
106 Returns the browser version (major and minor) as a string. For example,
107 for Chrome 36.0.1985.67, this returns "36.0".
108 browser_major()
110 Returns the major part of the version as a string. For example, for
111 Chrome 36.0.1985.67, this returns "36".
112 Returns undef if no version information can be detected.
114 browser_minor()
116 Returns the minor part of the version as a string. This includes the
117 decimal point; for example, for Chrome 36.0.1985.67, this returns ".0".
118 Returns undef if no version information can be detected.
120 browser_beta()
122 Returns any part of the version after the major and minor version, as a
123 string. For example, for Chrome 36.0.1985.67, this returns ".1985.67".
124 The beta part of the string can contain any type of alphanumeric
125 characters.
126 Returns undef if no version information can be detected. Returns an
128 empty string if version information is detected but it contains only a
129 major and minor version with nothing following.
130
132 os()
133 Returns one of the following strings, or "undef":
134 windows, winphone, mac, macosx, linux, android, ios, os2, unix, vms,
136 chromeos, firefoxos, ps3, psp, rimtabletos, blackberry, amiga, brew
137 os_string()
139 Returns a human formatted version of the OS name. These names are
140 subject to change and are really meant for display purposes. This may
141 include information additional to what's in os() (e.g. distinguishing
142 various editions of Windows from one another) (although for a way to do
143 that that's more suitable for use in program logic, see below under "OS
144 related properties").
145 Returns "undef" if no OS information could be detected.
147 os_version(), os_major(), os_minor(), os_beta()
149 Returns version information for the OS, if any could be detected. The
150 format is the same as for the browser_version() functions.
151
153 mobile()
154 Returns true if the browser appears to belong to a mobile phone or
155 similar device (i.e. one small enough that the mobile version of a page
156 is probably preferable over the desktop version).
157 In previous versions, tablet devices sometimes had mobile() return
159 true. They are now mutually exclusive.
160 tablet()
162 Returns true if the browser appears to belong to a tablet device.
163 device()
165 Returns the type of mobile / tablet hardware, if it can be detected.
166 Currently returns one of: android, audrey, avantgo, blackberry, dsi,
168 iopener, ipad, iphone, ipod, kindle, n3ds, palm, ps3, psp, wap, webos,
169 winphone.
170 Returns "undef" if this is not a tablet/mobile device or no hardware
172 information can be detected.
173 device_string()
175 Returns a human formatted version of the hardware device name. These
176 names are subject to change and are really meant for display purposes.
177 You should use the device() method in your logic. This may include
178 additional information (such as the model of phone if it is
179 detectable).
180 Returns "undef" if this is not a portable device or if no device name
182 can be detected.
183
185 robot()
186 If the user agent appears to be a robot, spider, crawler, or other
187 automated Web client, this returns one of the following values:
188 lwp, slurp, yahoo, bingbot, msnmobile, msn, msoffice, ahrefs,
190 altavista, apache, askjeeves, baidu, curl, facebook, getright,
191 googleadsbot, googleadsense, googlebotimage, googlebotnews,
192 googlebotvideo, googlefavicon, googlemobile, google, golib, indy,
193 infoseek, ipsagent, linkchecker, linkexchange, lycos, malware, mj12bot,
194 nutch, phplib, puf, rubylib, scooter, specialarchiver, wget, yandexbot,
195 yandeximages, java, unknown
196 Returns "unknown" when the user agent is believed to be a robot but is
198 not identified as one of the above specific robots.
199 Returns "undef" if the user agent is not a robot or cannot be
201 identified.
202 Note that if a robot crafts a user agent designed to impersonate a
204 particular browser, we generally set properties appropriate to both the
205 actual robot, and the browser it is impersonating. For example,
206 googlebot-mobile pretends to be mobile safari so that it will get
207 mobile versions of pages. In this case, browser() will return 'safari',
208 the properties will generally be set as if for Mobile Safari, the
209 'robot' property will be set, and robot() will return 'googlemobile'.
210 lib()
212 Returns true if the user agent appears to be an HTTP library or tool
214 (e.g. LWP, curl, wget, java). Generally libraries are also classified
215 as robots, although it is impossible to tell whether they are being
216 operated by an automated system or a human.
217 robot_string()
219 Returns a human formatted version of the robot name. These names are
221 subject to change and are meant for display purposes. This may include
222 additional information (e.g. robots which return "unknown" from robot()
223 generally can be identified in a human-readable fashion by reading
224 robot_string() ).
225 robot_id()
227 This method is currently in beta.
229 Returns an id consisting of lower case letters, numbers and dashes.
231 This id will remain constant, so you can use it for matching against a
232 particular robot. The ids were introduced in version 3.14. There may
233 still be a few corrections to ids in subsequent releases. Once this
234 method becomes stable the ids will also be frozen.
235 all_robot_ids()
237 This method returns an "ArrayRef" of all possible "robot_id" values.
239 robot_version(), robot_major(), robot_minor(), robot_beta()
241 Returns version information for the robot, if any could be detected.
242 The format is the same as for the browser_version() functions.
243 Note that if a robot crafts a user agent designed to impersonate a
245 particular browser, we generally return results appropriate to both the
246 actual robot, and the browser it is impersonating. For example,
247 googlebot-mobile pretends to be mobile safari so that it will get
248 mobile versions of pages. In this case, robot_version() will return the
249 version of googlebot-mobile, and browser_version() will return the
250 version of Safari that googlebot-mobile is impersonating.
251
253 Operating systems, devices, browser names, rendering engines, and true-
254 or-false methods (e.g. "mobile" and "lib") are all browser properties.
255 For example, calling browser_properties() for Mobile Safari running on
256 an Android will return this list:
257 ('android', 'device', 'mobile', 'mobile_safari', 'safari', 'webkit')
259 browser_properties()
261 Returns all properties for this user agent, as a list. Note that
262 because a large number of cases must be considered, this will take
263 significantly more time than simply querying the particular methods you
264 care about.
265 A mostly complete list of properties follows (i.e. each of these
267 methods is both a method you can call, and also a property that may be
268 in the list returned by browser_properties() ). In addition to this
269 list, robot(), lib(), device(), mobile(), and tablet() are all browser
270 properties.
271 OS related properties
273 The following methods are available, each returning a true or false
274 value. Some methods also test for the operating system version. The
275 indentations below show the hierarchy of tests (for example, win2k is
276 considered a type of winnt, which is a type of win32)
277 windows()
279 win16 win3x win31
281 win32
282 winme win95 win98
283 winnt
284 win2k winxp win2k3 winvista win7
285 win8
286 win8_0 win8_1
287 win10
288 win10_0
289 wince
290 winphone
291 winphone7 winphone7_5 winphone8 winphone10
292 dotnet()
294 x11()
296 webview()
298 chromeos()
300 firefoxos()
302 mac()
304 mac68k macppc macosx ios
306 os2()
308 bb10()
310 rimtabletos()
312 unix()
314 sun sun4 sun5 suni86 irix irix5 irix6 hpux hpux9 hpux10
316 aix aix1 aix2 aix3 aix4 linux sco unixware mpras reliant
317 dec sinix freebsd bsd
318 vms()
320 amiga()
322 ps3gameos()
324 pspgameos()
326 It may not be possible to detect Win98 in Netscape 4.x and earlier. On
328 Opera 3.0, the userAgent string includes "Windows 95/NT4" on all Win32,
329 so you can't distinguish between Win95 and WinNT.
330 Browser related properties
332 The following methods are available, each returning a true or false
333 value. Some methods also test for the browser version, saving you from
334 checking the version separately.
335 adm
337 aol aol3 aol4 aol5 aol6
339 applecoremedia
341 avantgo
343 browsex
345 chrome
347 dalvik
349 emacs
351 epiphany
353 firefox
355 galeon
357 icab
359 ie ie3 ie4 ie4up ie5 ie5up ie55 ie55up ie6 ie7 ie8 ie9 ie10 ie11
361 ie_compat_mode
363 The ie_compat_mode is used to determine if the IE user agent is for the
365 compatibility mode view, in which case the real version of IE is higher
366 than that detected. The true version of IE can be inferred from the
367 version of Trident in the engine_version method.
368 konqueror
370 lotusnotes
372 lynx links elinks
374 mobile_safari
376 mosaic
378 mozilla
380 neoplanet neoplanet2
382 netfront
384 netscape nav2 nav3 nav4 nav4up nav45 nav45up navgold nav6 nav6up
386 obigo
388 opera opera3 opera4 opera5 opera6 opera7
390 polaris
392 pubsub
394 realplayer
396 The realplayer method above tests for the presence of either the
398 RealPlayer plug-in "(r1 " or the browser "RealPlayer".
399 realplayer_browser
401 The realplayer_browser method tests for the presence of the RealPlayer
403 browser (but returns 0 for the plugin).
404 safari
406 seamonkey
408 silk
410 staroffice
412 ucbrowser
414 webtv
416 Netscape 6, even though it's called six, in the User-Agent string has
418 version number 5. The nav6 and nav6up methods correctly handle this
419 quirk. The Firefox test correctly detects the older-named versions of
420 the browser (Phoenix, Firebird).
421 Device related properties
423 The following methods are available, each returning a true or false
424 value.
425 android
427 audrey
429 avantgo
431 blackberry
433 dsi
435 iopener
437 iphone
439 ipod
441 ipad
443 kindle
445 kindlefire
447 n3ds
449 palm
451 webos
453 wap
455 Note that 'wap' indicates that the device is capable of WAP, not
457 necessarily that the device is limited to WAP only. Most modern WAP
458 devices are also capable of rendering standard HTML.
459 psp
461 ps3
463 Robot properties
465 These methods are now deprecated and will be removed in a future
466 release. Please use the "robot()" and "robot_id()" methods to identify
467 the bots. Use "robot_id()" if you need to match on a string, since the
468 value that is returned by "robot" could possibly change in a future
469 release.
470 The following additional methods are available, each returning a true
472 or false value. This is by no means a complete list of robots that
473 exist on the Web.
474 ahrefs
476 altavista
478 apache
480 askjeeves
482 baidu
484 bingbot
486 curl
488 facebook
490 getright
492 golib
494 google
496 googleadsbot
498 googleadsense
500 googlemobile
502 indy
504 infoseek
506 ipsagent
508 java
510 linkexchange
512 lwp
514 lycos
516 malware
518 mj12bot
520 msn
522 msoffice
524 puf
526 rubylib
528 slurp
530 wget
532 yahoo
534 yandex
536 yandeximages
538 Engine properties
540 The following properties indicate if a particular rendering engine is
541 being used.
542 webkit
544 gecko
546 trident
548 presto
550 khtml
552
554 user_agent()
555 Returns the value of the user agent string.
556 Calling this method with a parameter to set the user agent has now been
558 removed; please use HTTP::BrowserDetect->new() to pass the user agent
559 string.
560 country()
562 Returns the country string as it may be found in the user agent string.
563 This will be in the form of an upper case 2 character code. ie: US, DE,
564 etc
565 language()
567 Returns the language string as it is found in the user agent string.
568 This will be in the form of an upper case 2 character code. ie: EN, DE,
569 etc
570 engine()
572 Returns the rendering engine, one of the following:
573 gecko, webkit, khtml, trident, ie, presto, netfront
575 Note that this returns "webkit" for webkit based browsers (including
577 Chrome/Blink). This is a change from previous versions of this library,
578 which returned "KHTML" for webkit.
579 Returns "undef" if none of the above rendering engines can be detected.
581 engine_string()
583 Returns a human formatted version of the rendering engine.
584 Note that this returns "WebKit" for webkit based browsers (including
586 Chrome/Blink). This is a change from previous versions of this library,
587 which returned "KHTML" for webkit.
588 Returns "undef" if none of the known rendering engines can be detected.
590 engine_version(), engine_major(), engine_minor(), engine_beta()
592 Returns version information for the rendering engine, if any could be
593 detected. The format is the same as for the browser_version()
594 functions.
595
597 device_name()
598 Deprecated alternate name for device_string()
599 version()
601 This is probably not what you want. Please use either
602 browser_version() or engine_version() instead.
603 Returns the version (major and minor) as a string.
605 This function returns wrong values for some Safari versions, for
607 compatibility with earlier code. browser_version() returns correct
608 version numbers for Safari.
609 major()
611 This is probably not what you want. Please use either browser_major()
612 or engine_major() instead.
613 Returns the integer portion of the browser version as a string.
615 This function returns wrong values for some Safari versions, for
617 compatibility with earlier code. browser_version() returns correct
618 version numbers for Safari.
619 minor()
621 This is probably not what you want. Please use either browser_minor()
622 or engine_minor() instead.
623 Returns the decimal portion of the browser version as a string.
625 This function returns wrong values for some Safari versions, for
627 compatibility with earlier code. browser_version() returns correct
628 version numbers for Safari.
629 beta()
631 This is probably not what you want. Please use browser_beta() instead.
632 Returns the beta version, consisting of any characters after the major
634 and minor version number, as a string.
635 This function returns wrong values for some Safari versions, for
637 compatibility with earlier code. browser_version() returns correct
638 version numbers for Safari.
639 public_version(), public_major(), public_minor(), public_beta()
641 Deprecated. Please use browser_version() and related functions
642 instead.
643 gecko_version()
645 If a Gecko rendering engine is used (as in Mozilla or Firefox), returns
646 the engine version. If no Gecko browser is being used, or the version
647 number can't be detected, returns undef.
648 This is an old function, preserved for compatibility; please use
650 engine_version() in new code.
651
653 Lee Semel, lee@semel.net (Original Author)
654 Peter Walsham (co-maintainer)
656 Olaf Alders, "olaf at wundercounter.com" (co-maintainer)
658
660 Thanks to the following for their contributions:
661 cho45
663 Leonardo Herrera
665 Denis F. Latypoff
667 merlynkline
669 Simon Waters
671 Toni Cebrin
673 Florian Merges
675 david.hilton.p
677 Steve Purkis
679 Andrew McGregor
681 Robin Smidsrod
683 Richard Noble
685 Josh Ritter
687 Mike Clarke
689 Marc Sebastian Pelzer
691 Alexey Surikov
693 Maros Kollar
695 Jay Rifkin
697 Luke Saunders
699 Jacob Rask
701 Heiko Weber
703 Jon Jensen
705 Jesse Thompson
707 Graham Barr
709 Enrico Sorcinelli
711 Olivier Bilodeau
713 Yoshiki Kurihara
715 Paul Findlay
717 Uwe Voelker
719 Douglas Christopher Wilson
721 John Oatis
723 Atsushi Kato
725 Ronald J. Kimball
727 Bill Rhodes
729 Thom Blake
731 Aran Deltac
733 yeahoffline
735 David Ihnen
737 Hao Wu
739 Perlover
741 Daniel Stadie
743 ben hengst
745 Andrew Moise
747 Atsushi Kato
749 Marco Fontani
751 Nicolas Doye
753
755 POD coverage is not 100%.
756
758 "Browser ID (User-Agent) Strings",
759 <http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/browser_ids.htm>
760 HTML::ParseBrowser.
762
765 You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.
766 perldoc HTTP::BrowserDetect
768 You can also look for information at:
770 · GitHub Source Repository
772 <http://github.com/oalders/http-browserdetect>
774 · Reporting Issues
776 <https://github.com/oalders/http-browserdetect/issues>
778 · AnnoCPAN: Annotated CPAN documentation
780 <http://annocpan.org/dist/HTTP-BrowserDetect>
782 · CPAN Ratings
784 <http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/HTTP-BrowserDetect>
786 · Search CPAN
788 <https://metacpan.org/module/HTTP::BrowserDetect>
790
792 The biggest limitation at this point is the test suite, which really
793 needs to have many more UserAgent strings to test against.
794
796 Patches are certainly welcome, with many thanks for the excellent
797 contributions which have already been received. The preferred method of
798 patching would be to fork the GitHub repo and then send me a pull
799 request, but plain old patch files are also welcome.
800 If you're able to add test cases, this will speed up the time to
802 release your changes. Just edit t/useragents.json so that the test
803 coverage includes any changes you have made. Please contact me if you
804 have any questions.
805 This distribution uses Dist::Zilla. If you're not familiar with this
807 module, please see
808 <https://github.com/oalders/http-browserdetect/issues/5> for some
809 helpful tips to get you started.
810
812 · Lee Semel <lee@semel.net>
813 · Peter Walsham
815 · Olaf Alders <olaf@wundercounter.com> (current maintainer)
817
819 This software is copyright (c) 2017 by Lee Semel.
820 This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
822 the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.
823perl v5.28.1 2019-02-05 HTTP::BrowserDetect(3)