ID: 27291
Comment by: php_bug_27291 at garykeith dot com
Reported By: php-bug-NOSPAM-2004 at ryandesign dot com
Status: Open
Bug Type: *General Issues
Operating System: *
PHP Version: 4CVS, 5CVS (2004-02-20)
New Comment:
Sorry I forgot to address your proposal.
You do need IIS to use browscap.dll. The problem is you cannot pass a
user agent to it directly like you can with PHP. I have a script (in
ASP/VBScript obviously, but probably easily converted to PHP) that lets
you pass a specific user agent to browscap.dll and get the resulting
browser in return.
Previous Comments:
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[2004-02-23 16:39:22] php_bug_27291 at garykeith dot com
Tell me what a .tgz file is and if I can do it I will.
I'm working two new bugs that I hope someone will post bug reports
about.
The first deals with the exclamation point that's part of the new
Yahoo! Slurp crawler. I'm not sure what PHP is doing since I don't
speak PHP but I'm told it's throwing a parsing error.
I've also had some complaints from people saying user agents aren't
being recognized since I switched from using Gecko/???????? to Gecko/*
as we discussed earlier.
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[2004-02-23 12:58:19] php-bug-NOSPAM-2004 at ryandesign dot com
Sounds like what we need is a script that takes the user
agents logged by a popular web site, runs them through
browscap.dll and PHP's get_browser(), compares the
results, and informs a PHP programmer about any
differences, so that get_browser() can be kept in line.
I hate to volunteer for such a task, as I'm not a member
of the PHP team, but perhaps, once my patch or one like
it is applied, I could try it out for awhile to see what
quantity of diffs is generated.
I'm not sure, however, how I would use browscap.dll.
What kind of server would need to be used, and what
programming language? I have a feeling you're going to
say Microsoft IIS and Visual Basic or ASP or some such,
none of which I've ever worked with. (I wouldn't know
where to begin.) But if a system could be developed
whereby one popular web server gathers a day's UA's, and
then passes it off to both a script using browscap.dll
and a second one using PHP's get_browser(), and then
takes the results, compares them, and saves out only the
differences, and then emails or FTPs a .tgz to me or
someone, that might be a place to start. I'd be happy to
help with such a script, tho like I said I wouldn't know
how to tackle the browscap.dll part.
I looked through all the diffs between the PHP 4.3.4
get_browser() matching and the results after applying my
patch on Jay's user agent file, and I'm encouraged by
the results. I think they're more accurate. I think it
should improve the situation greatly. Gary, if you'd
like to send your huge 20,000-entry user agent list in a
.tgz I could do some more comparisons and see how the
patch holds up.
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[2004-02-23 12:01:41] php_bug_27291 at garykeith dot com
Jay, whom can I contact at PHP to let them know I no longer want to be
the official source of browscap.ini for PHP? In the past two days I've
had two bug reports, both of which only happen in PHP. When
browscap.dll is doing the parsing it works fine.
I'm fed up with PHP. I waste more of my time dealing with bugs in PHP
than any other aspect of my project and it's just not worth it to me
anymore.
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[2004-02-19 15:10:07] php_bug_27291 at garykeith dot com
Hi, Jay.
I use Microsoft's browscap.dll as my baseline for testing. I don't know
of any way you can legally get a look at the source code for that!
I can't speak for the accuracy of the stuff I offer on my site for PHP
or Java because I know nothing about either language. I work mostly in
C++, C# and Visual Basic. The best I can tell you about that stuff is
I've had almost no complaints about them beyond their inability to
adapt to new properties in the browscap.ini file.
BTW, the Spoofed IE is from the parent Spoofed User Agents. These are
user agents that are almost like the real thing and I keep a close
watch on them to see if they eventually need to be moved to the Website
Strippers parent.
Anyway, whatever it takes to get these bugs fixed, let's do it.
Although I'm no longer willing to make major changes in my files to
accommodate PHP perhaps my database of 22,000 user agents will let you
do some more thorough testing. I'll also be willing to help in whatever
other ways I can.
You can reach me via the e-mail address I used here if you need to
contact me privately.
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[2004-02-19 13:17:01] jay@php.net
I had done some work on the get_browser() function a while
back, and I believe those were the last major changes to
occur to that function. The function seemed to have been
abandoned for quite some time before those changes.
For the most part, based on the testing I did, the results
seemed quite favourable, i.e. more information was now
being returned by the function, such as operating systems
and such that were previously missing from get_browser()'s
output. Obviously there is still some room for
improvement, though.
I tried the original poster's patch using Gary's most
up-to-date browscap.ini file and had some mixed results. I
tested all of the unique user agent strings we had in our
apache logs at work (1914 strings) and the results were
sometimes better, sometimes worse, but overall they were
pretty much the same. Here's a few things I noticed:
- Netscape 7.x on Linux is better after the changes. (It
was being reported as Mozilla 1.4 previously.)
- Serveral versions of Mozilla on linux come up as Default
Browser after the changes, as opposed to the correct
information before the changes.
- Something identified as a "Spoofed IE" is coming up
correct before the changes, but comes up as Default
Browser after the changes.
- Epiphany 1.0 gets Default Browser after the changes, but
comes up with "Mozilla 1.4" before the changes.
- Some versions of Safari are being reported as Default
Browser after the changes, while before the changes they
seem to be coming up properly. (This includes the example
in the original poster's example, which came up as Safari
1.1 on my system.)
- Some versions of Galeon are being reported better after
the changes.
- Some user agents that were reported as being Website
Strippers before are now being reported as Default
Browser.
You can find the results of the tests, the UA strings I
used and the script to generate them here:
http://216.94.11.234/browsers.tar.gz
That's with an up-to-date PHP_4_3 checkout and the latest
browscap.ini.
To Gary: I'll take any suggestions on how to improve
get_browser(). Is there any similar implementation that
provides better results that I can get ahold of? I see
things for IIS, Java, etc. on your site, but is any of
them better than the rest that I should look at?
J
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