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 3.31
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" if $ua->browser_string;
21 print 'Version: ' . $ua->browser_version . $ua->browser_beta . "\n" if $ua->browser_version;
22 print 'OS: ' . $ua->os_string . "\n" if $ua->os_string;
23 # Detect operating system
25 if ( $ua->windows ) {
26 if ( $ua->winnt ) {
27 # do something
28 }
29 if ( $ua->win95 ) {
30 # do something
31 }
32 }
33 print "Mac\n" if $ua->macosx;
34 # Detect browser vendor and version
36 print "Safari\n" if $ua->safari;
37 print "MSIE\n" if $ua->ie;
38 print "Mobile\n" if $ua->mobile;
39 if ( $ua->browser_major(4) ) {
40 if ( $ua->browser_minor > .5 ) {
41 # ...;
42 }
43 }
44 if ( $ua->browser_version > 4.5 ) {
45 # ...;
46 }
47
49 The HTTP::BrowserDetect object does a number of tests on an HTTP user
50 agent string. The results of these tests are available via methods of
51 the object.
52 For an online demonstration of this module's parsing, you can check out
54 <http://www.browserdetect.org/>
55 This module was originally based upon the JavaScript browser detection
57 code available at
58 <http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/sniffer/browser_type.html>.
59
61 new()
62 HTTP::BrowserDetect->new( $user_agent_string )
63 The constructor may be called with a user agent string specified.
65 Otherwise, it will use the value specified by $ENV{'HTTP_USER_AGENT'},
66 which is set by the web server when calling a CGI script.
67
70 browser()
71 Returns the browser, as one of the following values:
72 chrome, firefox, ie, opera, safari, adm, applecoremedia, blackberry,
74 brave, browsex, dalvik, elinks, links, lynx, emacs, epiphany, galeon,
75 konqueror, icab, lotusnotes, mosaic, mozilla, netfront, netscape, n3ds,
76 dsi, obigo, polaris, pubsub, realplayer, seamonkey, silk, staroffice,
77 ucbrowser, webtv
78 If the browser could not be identified (either because unrecognized or
80 because it is a robot), returns "undef".
81 browser_string()
83 Returns a human formatted version of the browser name. These names are
84 subject to change and are meant for display purposes. This may include
85 information additional to what's in browser() (e.g. distinguishing
86 Firefox from Iceweasel).
87 If the user agent could not be identified, or if it was identified as a
89 robot instead, returns "undef".
90
92 Please note that that the version(), major() and minor() methods have
93 been deprecated as of release 1.78 of this module. They should be
94 replaced with browser_version(), browser_major(), browser_minor(), and
95 browser_beta().
96 The reasoning behind this is that version() method will, in the case of
98 Safari, return the Safari/XXX numbers even when Version/XXX numbers are
99 present in the UserAgent string (i.e. it will return incorrect versions
100 for Safari in some cases).
101 browser_version()
103 Returns the browser version (major and minor) as a string. For example,
104 for Chrome 36.0.1985.67, this returns "36.0".
105 browser_major()
107 Returns the major part of the version as a string. For example, for
108 Chrome 36.0.1985.67, this returns "36".
109 Returns undef if no version information can be detected.
111 browser_minor()
113 Returns the minor part of the version as a string. This includes the
114 decimal point; for example, for Chrome 36.0.1985.67, this returns ".0".
115 Returns undef if no version information can be detected.
117 browser_beta()
119 Returns any part of the version after the major and minor version, as a
120 string. For example, for Chrome 36.0.1985.67, this returns ".1985.67".
121 The beta part of the string can contain any type of alphanumeric
122 characters.
123 Returns undef if no version information can be detected. Returns an
125 empty string if version information is detected but it contains only a
126 major and minor version with nothing following.
127
129 os()
130 Returns one of the following strings, or "undef":
131 windows, winphone, mac, macosx, linux, android, ios, os2, unix, vms,
133 chromeos, firefoxos, ps3, psp, rimtabletos, blackberry, amiga, brew
134 os_string()
136 Returns a human formatted version of the OS name. These names are
137 subject to change and are really meant for display purposes. This may
138 include information additional to what's in os() (e.g. distinguishing
139 various editions of Windows from one another) (although for a way to do
140 that that's more suitable for use in program logic, see below under "OS
141 related properties").
142 Returns "undef" if no OS information could be detected.
144 os_version(), os_major(), os_minor(), os_beta()
146 Returns version information for the OS, if any could be detected. The
147 format is the same as for the browser_version() functions.
148
150 mobile()
151 Returns true if the browser appears to belong to a mobile phone or
152 similar device (i.e. one small enough that the mobile version of a page
153 is probably preferable over the desktop version).
154 In previous versions, tablet devices sometimes had mobile() return
156 true. They are now mutually exclusive.
157 tablet()
159 Returns true if the browser appears to belong to a tablet device.
160 device()
162 Returns the type of mobile / tablet hardware, if it can be detected.
163 Currently returns one of: android, audrey, avantgo, blackberry, dsi,
165 iopener, ipad, iphone, ipod, kindle, n3ds, palm, ps3, psp, wap, webos,
166 winphone.
167 Returns "undef" if this is not a tablet/mobile device or no hardware
169 information can be detected.
170 device_string()
172 Returns a human formatted version of the hardware device name. These
173 names are subject to change and are really meant for display purposes.
174 You should use the device() method in your logic. This may include
175 additional information (such as the model of phone if it is
176 detectable).
177 Returns "undef" if this is not a portable device or if no device name
179 can be detected.
180
182 robot()
183 If the user agent appears to be a robot, spider, crawler, or other
184 automated Web client, this returns one of the following values:
185 lwp, slurp, yahoo, bingbot, msnmobile, msn, msoffice, ahrefs,
187 altavista, apache, askjeeves, baidu, curl, facebook, getright,
188 googleadsbot, googleadsense, googlebotimage, googlebotnews,
189 googlebotvideo, googlefavicon, googlemobile, google, golib, indy,
190 infoseek, ipsagent, linkchecker, linkexchange, lycos, malware, mj12bot,
191 nutch, phplib, puf, rubylib, scooter, specialarchiver, wget, yandexbot,
192 yandeximages, java, unknown
193 Returns "unknown" when the user agent is believed to be a robot but is
195 not identified as one of the above specific robots.
196 Returns "undef" if the user agent is not a robot or cannot be
198 identified.
199 Note that if a robot crafts a user agent designed to impersonate a
201 particular browser, we generally set properties appropriate to both the
202 actual robot, and the browser it is impersonating. For example,
203 googlebot-mobile pretends to be mobile safari so that it will get
204 mobile versions of pages. In this case, browser() will return 'safari',
205 the properties will generally be set as if for Mobile Safari, the
206 'robot' property will be set, and robot() will return 'googlemobile'.
207 lib()
209 Returns true if the user agent appears to be an HTTP library or tool
211 (e.g. LWP, curl, wget, java). Generally libraries are also classified
212 as robots, although it is impossible to tell whether they are being
213 operated by an automated system or a human.
214 robot_string()
216 Returns a human formatted version of the robot name. These names are
218 subject to change and are meant for display purposes. This may include
219 additional information (e.g. robots which return "unknown" from robot()
220 generally can be identified in a human-readable fashion by reading
221 robot_string() ).
222 robot_id()
224 This method is currently in beta.
226 Returns an id consisting of lower case letters, numbers and dashes.
228 This id will remain constant, so you can use it for matching against a
229 particular robot. The ids were introduced in version 3.14. There may
230 still be a few corrections to ids in subsequent releases. Once this
231 method becomes stable the ids will also be frozen.
232 all_robot_ids()
234 This method returns an "ArrayRef" of all possible "robot_id" values.
236 robot_version(), robot_major(), robot_minor(), robot_beta()
238 Returns version information for the robot, if any could be detected.
239 The format is the same as for the browser_version() functions.
240 Note that if a robot crafts a user agent designed to impersonate a
242 particular browser, we generally return results appropriate to both the
243 actual robot, and the browser it is impersonating. For example,
244 googlebot-mobile pretends to be mobile safari so that it will get
245 mobile versions of pages. In this case, robot_version() will return the
246 version of googlebot-mobile, and browser_version() will return the
247 version of Safari that googlebot-mobile is impersonating.
248
250 Operating systems, devices, browser names, rendering engines, and true-
251 or-false methods (e.g. "mobile" and "lib") are all browser properties.
252 For example, calling browser_properties() for Mobile Safari running on
253 an Android will return this list:
254 ('android', 'device', 'mobile', 'mobile_safari', 'safari', 'webkit')
256 browser_properties()
258 Returns all properties for this user agent, as a list. Note that
259 because a large number of cases must be considered, this will take
260 significantly more time than simply querying the particular methods you
261 care about.
262 A mostly complete list of properties follows (i.e. each of these
264 methods is both a method you can call, and also a property that may be
265 in the list returned by browser_properties() ). In addition to this
266 list, robot(), lib(), device(), mobile(), and tablet() are all browser
267 properties.
268 OS related properties
270 The following methods are available, each returning a true or false
271 value. Some methods also test for the operating system version. The
272 indentations below show the hierarchy of tests (for example, win2k is
273 considered a type of winnt, which is a type of win32)
274 windows()
276 win16 win3x win31
278 win32
279 winme win95 win98
280 winnt
281 win2k winxp win2k3 winvista win7
282 win8
283 win8_0 win8_1
284 win10
285 win10_0
286 wince
287 winphone
288 winphone7 winphone7_5 winphone8 winphone10
289 dotnet()
291 x11()
293 webview()
295 chromeos()
297 firefoxos()
299 mac()
301 mac68k macppc macosx ios
303 os2()
305 bb10()
307 rimtabletos()
309 unix()
311 sun sun4 sun5 suni86 irix irix5 irix6 hpux hpux9 hpux10
313 aix aix1 aix2 aix3 aix4 linux sco unixware mpras reliant
314 dec sinix freebsd bsd
315 vms()
317 amiga()
319 ps3gameos()
321 pspgameos()
323 It may not be possible to detect Win98 in Netscape 4.x and earlier. On
325 Opera 3.0, the userAgent string includes "Windows 95/NT4" on all Win32,
326 so you can't distinguish between Win95 and WinNT.
327 Browser related properties
329 The following methods are available, each returning a true or false
330 value. Some methods also test for the browser version, saving you from
331 checking the version separately.
332 adm
334 aol aol3 aol4 aol5 aol6
336 applecoremedia
338 avantgo
340 browsex
342 chrome
344 dalvik
346 emacs
348 epiphany
350 firefox
352 galeon
354 icab
356 ie ie3 ie4 ie4up ie5 ie5up ie55 ie55up ie6 ie7 ie8 ie9 ie10 ie11
358 ie_compat_mode
360 The ie_compat_mode is used to determine if the IE user agent is for the
362 compatibility mode view, in which case the real version of IE is higher
363 than that detected. The true version of IE can be inferred from the
364 version of Trident in the engine_version method.
365 konqueror
367 lotusnotes
369 lynx links elinks
371 mobile_safari
373 mosaic
375 mozilla
377 neoplanet neoplanet2
379 netfront
381 netscape nav2 nav3 nav4 nav4up nav45 nav45up navgold nav6 nav6up
383 obigo
385 opera opera3 opera4 opera5 opera6 opera7
387 polaris
389 pubsub
391 realplayer
393 The realplayer method above tests for the presence of either the
395 RealPlayer plug-in "(r1 " or the browser "RealPlayer".
396 realplayer_browser
398 The realplayer_browser method tests for the presence of the RealPlayer
400 browser (but returns 0 for the plugin).
401 safari
403 seamonkey
405 silk
407 staroffice
409 ucbrowser
411 webtv
413 Netscape 6, even though it's called six, in the User-Agent string has
415 version number 5. The nav6 and nav6up methods correctly handle this
416 quirk. The Firefox test correctly detects the older-named versions of
417 the browser (Phoenix, Firebird).
418 Device related properties
420 The following methods are available, each returning a true or false
421 value.
422 android
424 audrey
426 avantgo
428 blackberry
430 dsi
432 iopener
434 iphone
436 ipod
438 ipad
440 kindle
442 kindlefire
444 n3ds
446 palm
448 webos
450 wap
452 Note that 'wap' indicates that the device is capable of WAP, not
454 necessarily that the device is limited to WAP only. Most modern WAP
455 devices are also capable of rendering standard HTML.
456 psp
458 ps3
460 Robot properties
462 These methods are now deprecated and will be removed in a future
463 release. Please use the "robot()" and "robot_id()" methods to identify
464 the bots. Use "robot_id()" if you need to match on a string, since the
465 value that is returned by "robot" could possibly change in a future
466 release.
467 The following additional methods are available, each returning a true
469 or false value. This is by no means a complete list of robots that
470 exist on the Web.
471 ahrefs
473 altavista
475 apache
477 askjeeves
479 baidu
481 bingbot
483 curl
485 facebook
487 getright
489 golib
491 google
493 googleadsbot
495 googleadsense
497 googlemobile
499 indy
501 infoseek
503 ipsagent
505 java
507 linkexchange
509 lwp
511 lycos
513 malware
515 mj12bot
517 msn
519 msoffice
521 puf
523 rubylib
525 slurp
527 wget
529 yahoo
531 yandex
533 yandeximages
535 Engine properties
537 The following properties indicate if a particular rendering engine is
538 being used.
539 webkit
541 gecko
543 trident
545 presto
547 khtml
549
551 user_agent()
552 Returns the value of the user agent string.
553 Calling this method with a parameter to set the user agent has now been
555 removed; please use HTTP::BrowserDetect->new() to pass the user agent
556 string.
557 u2f()
559 Returns true if this browser and version are known to support Universal
560 Second Factor (U2F). This method will need future updates as more
561 browsers fully support this standard.
562 country()
564 Returns the country string as it may be found in the user agent string.
565 This will be in the form of an upper case 2 character code. ie: US, DE,
566 etc
567 language()
569 Returns the language string as it is found in the user agent string.
570 This will be in the form of an upper case 2 character code. ie: EN, DE,
571 etc
572 engine()
574 Returns the rendering engine, one of the following:
575 gecko, webkit, khtml, trident, ie, presto, netfront
577 Note that this returns "webkit" for webkit based browsers (including
579 Chrome/Blink). This is a change from previous versions of this library,
580 which returned "KHTML" for webkit.
581 Returns "undef" if none of the above rendering engines can be detected.
583 engine_string()
585 Returns a human formatted version of the rendering engine.
586 Note that this returns "WebKit" for webkit based browsers (including
588 Chrome/Blink). This is a change from previous versions of this library,
589 which returned "KHTML" for webkit.
590 Returns "undef" if none of the known rendering engines can be detected.
592 engine_version(), engine_major(), engine_minor(), engine_beta()
594 Returns version information for the rendering engine, if any could be
595 detected. The format is the same as for the browser_version()
596 functions.
597
599 device_name()
600 Deprecated alternate name for device_string()
601 version()
603 This is probably not what you want. Please use either
604 browser_version() or engine_version() instead.
605 Returns the version (major and minor) as a string.
607 This function returns wrong values for some Safari versions, for
609 compatibility with earlier code. browser_version() returns correct
610 version numbers for Safari.
611 major()
613 This is probably not what you want. Please use either browser_major()
614 or engine_major() instead.
615 Returns the integer portion of the browser version as a string.
617 This function returns wrong values for some Safari versions, for
619 compatibility with earlier code. browser_version() returns correct
620 version numbers for Safari.
621 minor()
623 This is probably not what you want. Please use either browser_minor()
624 or engine_minor() instead.
625 Returns the decimal portion of the browser version as a string.
627 This function returns wrong values for some Safari versions, for
629 compatibility with earlier code. browser_version() returns correct
630 version numbers for Safari.
631 beta()
633 This is probably not what you want. Please use browser_beta() instead.
634 Returns the beta version, consisting of any characters after the major
636 and minor version number, as a string.
637 This function returns wrong values for some Safari versions, for
639 compatibility with earlier code. browser_version() returns correct
640 version numbers for Safari.
641 public_version(), public_major(), public_minor(), public_beta()
643 Deprecated. Please use browser_version() and related functions
644 instead.
645 gecko_version()
647 If a Gecko rendering engine is used (as in Mozilla or Firefox), returns
648 the engine version. If no Gecko browser is being used, or the version
649 number can't be detected, returns undef.
650 This is an old function, preserved for compatibility; please use
652 engine_version() in new code.
653
655 Lee Semel, lee@semel.net (Original Author)
656 Peter Walsham (co-maintainer)
658 Olaf Alders, "olaf at wundercounter.com" (co-maintainer)
660
662 Thanks to the following for their contributions:
663 cho45
665 Leonardo Herrera
667 Denis F. Latypoff
669 merlynkline
671 Simon Waters
673 Toni Cebrin
675 Florian Merges
677 david.hilton.p
679 Steve Purkis
681 Andrew McGregor
683 Robin Smidsrod
685 Richard Noble
687 Josh Ritter
689 Mike Clarke
691 Marc Sebastian Pelzer
693 Alexey Surikov
695 Maros Kollar
697 Jay Rifkin
699 Luke Saunders
701 Jacob Rask
703 Heiko Weber
705 Jon Jensen
707 Jesse Thompson
709 Graham Barr
711 Enrico Sorcinelli
713 Olivier Bilodeau
715 Yoshiki Kurihara
717 Paul Findlay
719 Uwe Voelker
721 Douglas Christopher Wilson
723 John Oatis
725 Atsushi Kato
727 Ronald J. Kimball
729 Bill Rhodes
731 Thom Blake
733 Aran Deltac
735 yeahoffline
737 David Ihnen
739 Hao Wu
741 Perlover
743 Daniel Stadie
745 ben hengst
747 Andrew Moise
749 Atsushi Kato
751 Marco Fontani
753 Nicolas Doye
755
757 POD coverage is not 100%.
758
760 "Browser ID (User-Agent) Strings",
761 <http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/browser_ids.htm>
762 HTML::ParseBrowser.
764
766 You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.
767 perldoc HTTP::BrowserDetect
769 You can also look for information at:
771 · GitHub Source Repository
773 <http://github.com/oalders/http-browserdetect>
775 · Reporting Issues
777 <https://github.com/oalders/http-browserdetect/issues>
779 · CPAN Ratings
781 <http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/HTTP-BrowserDetect>
783 · Search CPAN
785 <https://metacpan.org/module/HTTP::BrowserDetect>
787
789 The biggest limitation at this point is the test suite, which really
790 needs to have many more UserAgent strings to test against.
791
793 Patches are certainly welcome, with many thanks for the excellent
794 contributions which have already been received. The preferred method of
795 patching would be to fork the GitHub repo and then send me a pull
796 request, but plain old patch files are also welcome.
797 If you're able to add test cases, this will speed up the time to
799 release your changes. Just edit t/useragents.json so that the test
800 coverage includes any changes you have made. Please contact me if you
801 have any questions.
802 This distribution uses Dist::Zilla. If you're not familiar with this
804 module, please see
805 <https://github.com/oalders/http-browserdetect/issues/5> for some
806 helpful tips to get you started.
807
809 · Lee Semel <lee@semel.net>
810 · Peter Walsham
812 · Olaf Alders <olaf@wundercounter.com> (current maintainer)
814
816 This software is copyright (c) 1999 by Lee Semel.
817 This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
819 the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.
820perl v5.32.0 2020-08-02 HTTP::BrowserDetect(3)