I'm using JQuery to issue an AJAX request to my own Webservice. I need to set or modify the User-Agent HTTP-Header for the HTTP-AJAX-Request, how can I do this the easiest way?
I tried the hint provided by some users to use the setRequestHeader Method to set the User-Agent, but this does not work. It does in fact work for other newly created headers (like X-Test-Header) but it does not work for User-Agent.
It is simply impossible, you are not allowed to change the user-agent for XMLHttpRequests. I'm not sure if this is valid for Internet-Explorer, but the w3c specifies here:
The setRequestHeader() method
[...]
When the setRequestHeader(header, value) method is invoked, the user agent must run these steps: [...]
Terminate these steps if header is a case-insensitive match for one of the following headers:
[...]
- User-Agent
User-Agent. MDN explicitly confirms that User-Agent is no longer forbidden. Chrome still refuses it, though, so I don't think your advice is invalid quite yet.If you are using jQuery, set the request header in the ajaxSetup.
$.ajaxSetup({
beforeSend: function(request) {
request.setRequestHeader("User-Agent","InsertUserAgentStringHere");
}
});
Well, you could always use jQuery to post to a server-side page which then in turn is able to modify the User-Agent header, and also make a request to the page which would have been directly accessed by jQuery.
A way to do this is to overwrite the native code in the __defineGetter__ method of the window.navigator object.
Check this out:
window.navigator.__defineGetter__('userAgent', function () {
return "___I'M A GHOST___";
});
Run navigator.userAgent in the console before and after to check.
Works in Chrome. I haven't checked other browsers.
You can read more about it here: https://www.codeproject.com/Tips/1036762/Mocking-userAgent-with-JavaScript
I have done it like this: I send the ajax request to a seperate php script that acts just like a forwarder, in this php script you will then make the original request and change the user-agent as you want.
You can set the user-agent in file_get_contents like this: https://gist.github.com/vyspiansky/82f4b1ef6fcff160047d
