1HTTP::BrowserDetect(3)User Contributed Perl DocumentationHTTP::BrowserDetect(3)
2
3
4

NAME

6       HTTP::BrowserDetect - Determine Web browser, version, and platform from
7       an HTTP user agent string
8

VERSION

10       version 3.37
11

SYNOPSIS

13           use HTTP::BrowserDetect ();
14
15           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
19           # 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
24           # 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
35           # 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

DESCRIPTION

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
53       For an online demonstration of this module's parsing, you can check out
54       <http://www.browserdetect.org/>
55
56       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

CONSTRUCTOR AND STARTUP

61   new()
62           HTTP::BrowserDetect->new( $user_agent_string )
63
64       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

SUBROUTINES/METHODS

Browser Information

70   browser()
71       Returns the browser, as one of the following values:
72
73       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, samsung
78
79       If the browser could not be identified (either because unrecognized or
80       because it is a robot), returns "undef".
81
82   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
88       If the user agent could not be identified, or if it was identified as a
89       robot instead, returns "undef".
90

Browser Version

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
97       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
102   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
106   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
110       Returns undef if no version information can be detected.
111
112   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
116       Returns undef if no version information can be detected.
117
118   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
124       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

Operating System

129   os()
130       Returns one of the following strings, or "undef":
131
132         windows, winphone, mac, macosx, linux, android, ios, os2, unix, vms,
133         chromeos, firefoxos, ps3, psp, rimtabletos, blackberry, amiga, brew
134
135   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
143       Returns "undef" if no OS information could be detected.
144
145   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

Mobile Devices

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
155       In previous versions, tablet devices sometimes had mobile() return
156       true. They are now mutually exclusive.
157
158   tablet()
159       Returns true if the browser appears to belong to a tablet device.
160
161   device()
162       Returns the type of mobile / tablet hardware, if it can be detected.
163
164       Currently returns one of: android, audrey, avantgo, blackberry, dsi,
165       iopener, ipad, iphone, ipod, kindle, n3ds, palm, ps3, psp, wap, webos,
166       winphone.
167
168       Returns "undef" if this is not a tablet/mobile device or no hardware
169       information can be detected.
170
171   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
178       Returns "undef" if this is not a portable device or if no device name
179       can be detected.
180

Robots

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
186       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, headlesschrome, unknown
193
194       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
197       Returns "undef" if the user agent is not a robot or cannot be
198       identified.
199
200       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
208       lib()
209
210       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
215       robot_string()
216
217       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
223       robot_id()
224
225       This method is currently in beta.
226
227       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
233       all_robot_ids()
234
235       This method returns an "ArrayRef" of all possible "robot_id" values.
236
237   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
241       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

Browser Properties

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
255       ('android', 'device', 'mobile', 'mobile_safari', 'safari', 'webkit')
256
257   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
263       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
269   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
275       windows()
276
277           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
290       dotnet()
291
292       x11()
293
294       webview()
295
296       chromeos()
297
298       firefoxos()
299
300       mac()
301
302       mac68k macppc macosx ios
303
304       os2()
305
306       bb10()
307
308       rimtabletos()
309
310       unix()
311
312         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
316       vms()
317
318       amiga()
319
320       ps3gameos()
321
322       pspgameos()
323
324       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
328   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
333       adm
334
335       aol aol3 aol4 aol5 aol6
336
337       applecoremedia
338
339       avantgo
340
341       browsex
342
343       chrome
344
345       dalvik
346
347       emacs
348
349       epiphany
350
351       firefox
352
353       galeon
354
355       icab
356
357       ie ie3 ie4 ie4up ie5 ie5up ie55 ie55up ie6 ie7 ie8 ie9 ie10 ie11
358
359       ie_compat_mode
360
361       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
366       konqueror
367
368       lotusnotes
369
370       lynx links elinks
371
372       mobile_safari
373
374       mosaic
375
376       mozilla
377
378       neoplanet neoplanet2
379
380       netfront
381
382       netscape nav2 nav3 nav4 nav4up nav45 nav45up navgold nav6 nav6up
383
384       obigo
385
386       opera opera3 opera4 opera5 opera6 opera7
387
388       polaris
389
390       pubsub
391
392       realplayer
393
394       The realplayer method above tests for the presence of either the
395       RealPlayer plug-in "(r1 " or the browser "RealPlayer".
396
397       realplayer_browser
398
399       The realplayer_browser method tests for the presence of the RealPlayer
400       browser (but returns 0 for the plugin).
401
402       safari
403
404       samsung
405
406       seamonkey
407
408       silk
409
410       staroffice
411
412       ucbrowser
413
414       webtv
415
416       Netscape 6, even though it's called six, in the User-Agent string has
417       version number 5. The nav6 and nav6up methods correctly handle this
418       quirk. The Firefox test correctly detects the older-named versions of
419       the browser (Phoenix, Firebird).
420
421   Device related properties
422       The following methods are available, each returning a true or false
423       value.
424
425       android
426
427       audrey
428
429       avantgo
430
431       blackberry
432
433       dsi
434
435       iopener
436
437       iphone
438
439       ipod
440
441       ipad
442
443       kindle
444
445       kindlefire
446
447       n3ds
448
449       palm
450
451       webos
452
453       wap
454
455       Note that 'wap' indicates that the device is capable of WAP, not
456       necessarily that the device is limited to WAP only. Most modern WAP
457       devices are also capable of rendering standard HTML.
458
459       psp
460
461       ps3
462
463   Robot properties
464       These methods are now deprecated and will be removed in a future
465       release.  Please use the robot() and robot_id() methods to identify the
466       bots.  Use robot_id() if you need to match on a string, since the value
467       that is returned by "robot" could possibly change in a future release.
468
469       The following additional methods are available, each returning a true
470       or false value. This is by no means a complete list of robots that
471       exist on the Web.
472
473       ahrefs
474
475       altavista
476
477       apache
478
479       askjeeves
480
481       baidu
482
483       bingbot
484
485       curl
486
487       facebook
488
489       getright
490
491       golib
492
493       google
494
495       googleadsbot
496
497       googleadsense
498
499       googlemobile
500
501       indy
502
503       infoseek
504
505       ipsagent
506
507       java
508
509       linkexchange
510
511       lwp
512
513       lycos
514
515       malware
516
517       mj12bot
518
519       msn
520
521       msoffice
522
523       puf
524
525       rubylib
526
527       slurp
528
529       wget
530
531       yahoo
532
533       yandex
534
535       yandeximages
536
537       headlesschrome
538
539   Engine properties
540       The following properties indicate if a particular rendering engine is
541       being used.
542
543       webkit
544
545       gecko
546
547       trident
548
549       presto
550
551       khtml
552

Other methods

554   user_agent()
555       Returns the value of the user agent string.
556
557       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
561   u2f()
562       Returns true if this browser and version are known to support Universal
563       Second Factor (U2F).  This method will need future updates as more
564       browsers fully support this standard.
565
566   country()
567       Returns the country string as it may be found in the user agent string.
568       This will be in the form of an upper case 2 character code. ie: US, DE,
569       etc
570
571   language()
572       Returns the language string as it is found in the user agent string.
573       This will be in the form of an upper case 2 character code. ie: EN, DE,
574       etc
575
576   engine()
577       Returns the rendering engine, one of the following:
578
579       gecko, webkit, khtml, trident, ie, presto, netfront
580
581       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
585       Returns "undef" if none of the above rendering engines can be detected.
586
587   engine_string()
588       Returns a human formatted version of the rendering engine.
589
590       Note that this returns "WebKit" for webkit based browsers (including
591       Chrome/Blink). This is a change from previous versions of this library,
592       which returned "KHTML" for webkit.
593
594       Returns "undef" if none of the known rendering engines can be detected.
595
596   engine_version(), engine_major(), engine_minor(), engine_beta()
597       Returns version information for the rendering engine, if any could be
598       detected. The format is the same as for the browser_version()
599       functions.
600

Deprecated methods

602   device_name()
603       Deprecated alternate name for device_string()
604
605   version()
606       This is probably not what you want.  Please use either
607       browser_version() or engine_version() instead.
608
609       Returns the version (major and minor) as a string.
610
611       This function returns wrong values for some Safari versions, for
612       compatibility with earlier code. browser_version() returns correct
613       version numbers for Safari.
614
615   major()
616       This is probably not what you want. Please use either browser_major()
617       or engine_major() instead.
618
619       Returns the integer portion of the browser version as a string.
620
621       This function returns wrong values for some Safari versions, for
622       compatibility with earlier code. browser_version() returns correct
623       version numbers for Safari.
624
625   minor()
626       This is probably not what you want. Please use either browser_minor()
627       or engine_minor() instead.
628
629       Returns the decimal portion of the browser version as a string.
630
631       This function returns wrong values for some Safari versions, for
632       compatibility with earlier code. browser_version() returns correct
633       version numbers for Safari.
634
635   beta()
636       This is probably not what you want. Please use browser_beta() instead.
637
638       Returns the beta version, consisting of any characters after the major
639       and minor version number, as a string.
640
641       This function returns wrong values for some Safari versions, for
642       compatibility with earlier code. browser_version() returns correct
643       version numbers for Safari.
644
645   public_version(), public_major(), public_minor(), public_beta()
646       Deprecated.  Please use browser_version() and related functions
647       instead.
648
649   gecko_version()
650       If a Gecko rendering engine is used (as in Mozilla or Firefox), returns
651       the engine version. If no Gecko browser is being used, or the version
652       number can't be detected, returns undef.
653
654       This is an old function, preserved for compatibility; please use
655       engine_version() in new code.
656

CREDITS

658       Lee Semel, lee@semel.net (Original Author)
659
660       Peter Walsham (co-maintainer)
661
662       Olaf Alders, "olaf at wundercounter.com" (co-maintainer)
663

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

665       Thanks to the following for their contributions:
666
667       cho45
668
669       Leonardo Herrera
670
671       Denis F. Latypoff
672
673       merlynkline
674
675       Simon Waters
676
677       Toni Cebrin
678
679       Florian Merges
680
681       david.hilton.p
682
683       Steve Purkis
684
685       Andrew McGregor
686
687       Robin Smidsrod
688
689       Richard Noble
690
691       Josh Ritter
692
693       Mike Clarke
694
695       Marc Sebastian Pelzer
696
697       Alexey Surikov
698
699       Maros Kollar
700
701       Jay Rifkin
702
703       Luke Saunders
704
705       Jacob Rask
706
707       Heiko Weber
708
709       Jon Jensen
710
711       Jesse Thompson
712
713       Graham Barr
714
715       Enrico Sorcinelli
716
717       Olivier Bilodeau
718
719       Yoshiki Kurihara
720
721       Paul Findlay
722
723       Uwe Voelker
724
725       Douglas Christopher Wilson
726
727       John Oatis
728
729       Atsushi Kato
730
731       Ronald J. Kimball
732
733       Bill Rhodes
734
735       Thom Blake
736
737       Aran Deltac
738
739       yeahoffline
740
741       David Ihnen
742
743       Hao Wu
744
745       Perlover
746
747       Daniel Stadie
748
749       ben hengst
750
751       Andrew Moise
752
753       Atsushi Kato
754
755       Marco Fontani
756
757       Nicolas Doye
758

TO DO

760       POD coverage is not 100%.
761

SEE ALSO

763       "Browser ID (User-Agent) Strings",
764       <http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/browser_ids.htm>
765
766       HTML::ParseBrowser.
767

SUPPORT

769       You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.
770
771           perldoc HTTP::BrowserDetect
772
773       You can also look for information at:
774
775       •   GitHub Source Repository
776
777           <http://github.com/oalders/http-browserdetect>
778
779       •   Reporting Issues
780
781           <https://github.com/oalders/http-browserdetect/issues>
782
783       •   Search CPAN
784
785           <https://metacpan.org/module/HTTP::BrowserDetect>
786

CONTRIBUTING

788       Patches are certainly welcome, with many thanks for the excellent
789       contributions which have already been received. The preferred method of
790       patching would be to fork the GitHub repo and then send a pull request.
791
792       Please include a test case as this will speed up the time to release
793       your changes. Just edit t/useragents.json so that the test coverage
794       includes any changes you have made. Please open a GitHub issue if you
795       have any questions.
796

AUTHORS

798       •   Lee Semel <lee@semel.net>
799
800       •   Peter Walsham
801
802       •   Olaf Alders <olaf@wundercounter.com> (current maintainer)
803
805       This software is copyright (c) 1999 by Lee Semel.
806
807       This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
808       the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.
809
810
811
812perl v5.36.0                      2023-01-20            HTTP::BrowserDetect(3)
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