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 3.16
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 c<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 chromeos()
296 firefoxos()
298 mac()
300 mac68k macppc macosx ios
302 os2()
304 bb10()
306 rimtabletos()
308 unix()
310 sun sun4 sun5 suni86 irix irix5 irix6 hpux hpux9 hpux10
312 aix aix1 aix2 aix3 aix4 linux sco unixware mpras reliant
313 dec sinix freebsd bsd
314 vms()
316 amiga()
318 ps3gameos()
320 pspgameos()
322 It may not be possibile to detect Win98 in Netscape 4.x and earlier. On
324 Opera 3.0, the userAgent string includes "Windows 95/NT4" on all Win32,
325 so you can't distinguish between Win95 and WinNT.
326 Browser related properties
328 The following methods are available, each returning a true or false
329 value. Some methods also test for the browser version, saving you from
330 checking the version separately.
331 adm
333 aol aol3 aol4 aol5 aol6
335 applecoremedia
337 avantgo
339 browsex
341 chrome
343 dalvik
345 emacs
347 epiphany
349 firefox
351 galeon
353 icab
355 ie ie3 ie4 ie4up ie5 ie5up ie55 ie55up ie6 ie7 ie8 ie9 ie10 ie11
357 ie_compat_mode
359 The ie_compat_mode is used to determine if the IE user agent is for the
361 compatibility mode view, in which case the real version of IE is higher
362 than that detected. The true version of IE can be inferred from the
363 version of Trident in the engine_version method.
364 konqueror
366 lotusnotes
368 lynx links elinks
370 mobile_safari
372 mosaic
374 mozilla
376 neoplanet neoplanet2
378 netfront
380 netscape nav2 nav3 nav4 nav4up nav45 nav45up navgold nav6 nav6up
382 obigo
384 opera opera3 opera4 opera5 opera6 opera7
386 polaris
388 pubsub
390 realplayer
392 The realplayer method above tests for the presence of either the
394 RealPlayer plug-in "(r1 " or the browser "RealPlayer".
395 realplayer_browser
397 The realplayer_browser method tests for the presence of the RealPlayer
399 browser (but returns 0 for the plugin).
400 safari
402 seamonkey
404 silk
406 staroffice
408 ucbrowser
410 webtv
412 Netscape 6, even though it's called six, in the User-Agent string has
414 version number 5. The nav6 and nav6up methods correctly handle this
415 quirk. The Firefox test correctly detects the older-named versions of
416 the browser (Phoenix, Firebird).
417 Device related properties
419 The following methods are available, each returning a true or false
420 value.
421 android
423 audrey
425 avantgo
427 blackberry
429 dsi
431 iopener
433 iphone
435 ipod
437 ipad
439 kindle
441 kindlefire
443 n3ds
445 palm
447 webos
449 wap
451 Note that 'wap' indicates that the device is capable of WAP, not
453 necessarily that the device is limited to WAP only. Most modern WAP
454 devices are also capable of rendering standard HTML.
455 psp
457 ps3
459 Robot properties
461 These methods are now deprecated and will be removed in a future
462 release. Please use the "robot()" and "robot_id()" methods to identify
463 the bots. Use "robot_id()" if you need to match on a string, since the
464 value that is returned by "robot" could possibly change in a future
465 release.
466 The following additional methods are available, each returning a true
468 or false value. This is by no means a complete list of robots that
469 exist on the Web.
470 ahrefs
472 altavista
474 apache
476 askjeeves
478 baidu
480 bingbot
482 curl
484 facebook
486 getright
488 golib
490 google
492 googleadsbot
494 googleadsense
496 googlemobile
498 indy
500 infoseek
502 ipsagent
504 java
506 linkexchange
508 lwp
510 lycos
512 malware
514 mj12bot
516 msn
518 msoffice
520 puf
522 rubylib
524 slurp
526 wget
528 yahoo
530 yandex
532 yandeximages
534 Engine properties
536 The following properties indicate if a particular rendering engine is
537 being used.
538 webkit
540 gecko
542 trident
544 presto
546 khtml
548
550 user_agent()
551 Returns the value of the user agent string.
552 Calling this method with a parameter to set the user agent has now been
554 removed; please use HTTP::BrowserDetect->new() to pass the user agent
555 string.
556 country()
558 Returns the country string as it may be found in the user agent string.
559 This will be in the form of an upper case 2 character code. ie: US, DE,
560 etc
561 language()
563 Returns the language string as it is found in the user agent string.
564 This will be in the form of an upper case 2 character code. ie: EN, DE,
565 etc
566 engine()
568 Returns the rendering engine, one of the following:
569 gecko, webkit, khtml, trident, ie, presto, netfront
571 Note that this returns "webkit" for webkit based browsers (including
573 Chrome/Blink). This is a change from previous versions of this library,
574 which returned "KHTML" for webkit.
575 Returns "undef" if none of the above rendering engines can be detected.
577 engine_string()
579 Returns a human formatted version of the rendering engine.
580 Note that this returns "WebKit" for webkit based browsers (including
582 Chrome/Blink). This is a change from previous versions of this library,
583 which returned "KHTML" for webkit.
584 Returns "undef" if none of the known rendering engines can be detected.
586 engine_version(), engine_major(), engine_minor(), engine_beta()
588 Returns version information for the rendering engine, if any could be
589 detected. The format is the same as for the browser_version()
590 functions.
591
593 device_name()
594 Deprecated alternate name for device_string()
595 version()
597 This is probably not what you want. Please use either
598 browser_version() or engine_version() instead.
599 Returns the version (major and minor) as a string.
601 This function returns wrong values for some Safari versions, for
603 compatibility with earlier code. browser_version() returns correct
604 version numbers for Safari.
605 major()
607 This is probably not what you want. Please use either browser_major()
608 or engine_major() instead.
609 Returns the integer portion of the browser version as a string.
611 This function returns wrong values for some Safari versions, for
613 compatibility with earlier code. browser_version() returns correct
614 version numbers for Safari.
615 minor()
617 This is probably not what you want. Please use either browser_minor()
618 or engine_minor() instead.
619 Returns the decimal portion of the browser version as a string.
621 This function returns wrong values for some Safari versions, for
623 compatibility with earlier code. browser_version() returns correct
624 version numbers for Safari.
625 beta()
627 This is probably not what you want. Please use browser_beta() instead.
628 Returns the beta version, consisting of any characters after the major
630 and minor version number, as a string.
631 This function returns wrong values for some Safari versions, for
633 compatibility with earlier code. browser_version() returns correct
634 version numbers for Safari.
635 public_version(), public_major(), public_minor(), public_beta()
637 Deprecated. Please use browser_version() and related functions
638 instead.
639 gecko_version()
641 If a Gecko rendering engine is used (as in Mozilla or Firefox), returns
642 the engine version. If no Gecko browser is being used, or the version
643 number can't be detected, returns undef.
644 This is an old function, preserved for compatibility; please use
646 engine_version() in new code.
647
649 Lee Semel, lee@semel.net (Original Author)
650 Peter Walsham (co-maintainer)
652 Olaf Alders, "olaf at wundercounter.com" (co-maintainer)
654
656 Thanks to the following for their contributions:
657 cho45
659 Leonardo Herrera
661 Denis F. Latypoff
663 merlynkline
665 Simon Waters
667 Toni Cebrin
669 Florian Merges
671 david.hilton.p
673 Steve Purkis
675 Andrew McGregor
677 Robin Smidsrod
679 Richard Noble
681 Josh Ritter
683 Mike Clarke
685 Marc Sebastian Pelzer
687 Alexey Surikov
689 Maros Kollar
691 Jay Rifkin
693 Luke Saunders
695 Jacob Rask
697 Heiko Weber
699 Jon Jensen
701 Jesse Thompson
703 Graham Barr
705 Enrico Sorcinelli
707 Olivier Bilodeau
709 Yoshiki Kurihara
711 Paul Findlay
713 Uwe Voelker
715 Douglas Christopher Wilson
717 John Oatis
719 Atsushi Kato
721 Ronald J. Kimball
723 Bill Rhodes
725 Thom Blake
727 Aran Deltac
729 yeahoffline
731 David Ihnen
733 Hao Wu
735 Perlover
737 Daniel Stadie
739 ben hengst
741 Andrew Moise
743 Atsushi Kato
745 Marco Fontani
747 Nicolas Doye
749
751 POD coverage is not 100%.
752
754 "Browser ID (User-Agent) Strings",
755 <http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/browser_ids.htm>
756 HTML::ParseBrowser.
758
761 You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.
762 perldoc HTTP::BrowserDetect
764 You can also look for information at:
766 · GitHub Source Repository
768 <http://github.com/oalders/http-browserdetect>
770 · Reporting Issues
772 <https://github.com/oalders/http-browserdetect/issues>
774 · AnnoCPAN: Annotated CPAN documentation
776 <http://annocpan.org/dist/HTTP-BrowserDetect>
778 · CPAN Ratings
780 <http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/HTTP-BrowserDetect>
782 · Search CPAN
784 <https://metacpan.org/module/HTTP::BrowserDetect>
786
788 The biggest limitation at this point is the test suite, which really
789 needs to have many more UserAgent strings to test against.
790
792 Patches are certainly welcome, with many thanks for the excellent
793 contributions which have already been received. The preferred method of
794 patching would be to fork the GitHub repo and then send me a pull
795 request, but plain old patch files are also welcome.
796 If you're able to add test cases, this will speed up the time to
798 release your changes. Just edit t/useragents.json so that the test
799 coverage includes any changes you have made. Please contact me if you
800 have any questions.
801 This distribution uses Dist::Zilla. If you're not familiar with this
803 module, please see
804 <https://github.com/oalders/http-browserdetect/issues/5> for some
805 helpful tips to get you started.
806
808 · Lee Semel <lee@semel.net>
809 · Peter Walsham
811 · Olaf Alders <olaf@wundercounter.com> (current maintainer)
813
815 This software is copyright (c) 2017 by Lee Semel.
816 This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
818 the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.
819perl v5.28.0 2017-12-14 HTTP::BrowserDetect(3)