Code to parse user agent string?

Question

As strange as I find this, I have not been able to find a good PHP function anywhere which will do an intelligent parse of a user agent string? Googled it for about 20 minutes now.

I have the string already, I just need something that will chop it up and give me at least browser/ver/os.

Know of a good snippet anywhere?

Yes, I know I can write my own, but I really don't have time at the moment. I need something I can plug in and use to finish up this project. — Spot
– Spot, Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 10:12
get_browser() is quiet old and slow. Use one of the parser here github.com/ThaDafinser/UserAgentParser — ThaDafinser
– ThaDafinser, Commented Feb 15, 2016 at 9:26
warning against using the suggested library above (TheDafinser). It seems to work by pushing a request to another site (useragentstring.com) which as we speak is DOWN!!!! Since I was using it somewhere, it slowed my site like nobody's business since the request had to run until timeout. Be warned — gthuo
– gthuo, Commented Jan 31, 2017 at 15:51

Dave Jarvis · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-25 22:27:37Z

23

The get_browser() function has been available in PHP for quite a long a time.

The PHP manual is free, can be downloaded in various formats and viewed online (with comments)

edited Jul 25, 2013 at 22:27

Dave Jarvis

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answered Jan 23, 2010 at 10:17

symcbean

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9 Comments

Spot Over a year ago

This would be a perfect example of how being up for more than two days can affect memory and cause you to ask extremely stupid questions about functions you already know about. :) Thanks

Jeremy Over a year ago

The post below (github.com/garetjax/phpbrowscap) is what the PHP manual suggests.

Bhavesh G Over a year ago

Is there any performance penalty when enabling get_browser() function in php ?

symcbean Over a year ago

@Bhavesh: that's a very complex question. Fortunately it has a very simple answer: measure it :)

user669677 Over a year ago

Forget to mention that in order to use that function you need a ~10MB php_browscap.ini file. - Otherwise this error will occur: browscap ini directive not set

|

rap-2-h · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-29 15:33:24Z

13

https://github.com/browscap/browscap-php - this is a standalone library that aims to replace get_browser function. For shared hostings it seems to be a better option.

Works on: PHP 5

edited Sep 29, 2015 at 15:33

rap-2-h

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answered Nov 27, 2011 at 10:51

MartyIX

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Comments

Piotr Olaszewski · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-03 12:54:58Z

3

You can try to use: https://github.com/tobie/ua-parser. This is multi-language tool to parsing user agent string. For PHP is here: https://github.com/tobie/ua-parser/tree/master/php

answered Jun 3, 2014 at 12:54

Piotr Olaszewski

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Comments

ThaDafinser · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-22 06:29:50Z

0

Try out ThaDafinser/UserAgentParser it's an abstraction for many available user agent parsers.

So if you are not happy with one - just switch to another (or combine them)

You can try it out here

edited Sep 22, 2016 at 6:29

answered Sep 22, 2016 at 6:18

ThaDafinser

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2 Comments

gthuo Over a year ago

gave me very many issues when the website they throw the processing requests to was down. It slowed my site badly.

ThaDafinser Over a year ago

Then you might used a remote parser like "useragentstring.com" (which is down lately). Of course that will then slow your website down. You can use a local parser when you rely on speed. See github.com/ThaDafinser/UserAgentParser#local-providers

gthuo · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-01 05:31:06Z

0

There is a PHP class library i found out, and it has worked so well for me. It is in the link below.

https://www.toms-world.org/blog/parseuseragentstring

It is lightweight and just does what I wanted (Browser, Version, OS, Mobile/PC, and much more) in a memory-friendy manner.

answered Feb 1, 2017 at 5:31

gthuo

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