note 92310 added to function.get-browser

If you're just finding this API, note that you may want to use a lighter-weight browser detection script. get_browser() requires the "browscap.ini" file, which is 300KB+. Loading and processing this file will likely impact script performance. Although it surely provides excellent detection results, in most cases a much simpler method can be just as effective. This is why so many previous commenters have provided alternate implementations. Here's the solution I ended up using, which I've tested on the agents listed at http://whatsmyuseragent.com/CommonUserAgents.asp It has the advantage of being compact and reasonably easy to extend (just add entries to the $known array defined at the top). It should be fairly performant as well, since it doesn't do any iteratoin or recursion. <?php function browser_info($agent=null) { // Declare known browsers to look for $known = array('msie', 'firefox', 'safari', 'webkit', 'opera', 'netscape', 'konqueror', 'gecko'); // Clean up agent and build regex that matches phrases for known browsers // (e.g. "Firefox/2.0" or "MSIE 6.0" (This only matches the major and minor // version numbers. E.g. "2.0.0.6" is parsed as simply "2.0" $agent = strtolower($agent ? $agent : $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']); $pattern = '#(?<browser>' . join('|', $known) . ')[/ ]+(?<version>[0-9]+(?:\.[0-9]+)?)#'; // Find all phrases (or return empty array if none found) if (!preg_match_all($pattern, $agent, $matches)) return array(); // Since some UAs have more than one phrase (e.g Firefox has a Gecko phrase, // Opera 7,8 have a MSIE phrase), use the last one found (the right-most one // in the UA). That's usually the most correct. $i = count($matches['browser'])-1; return array($matches['browser'][$i] => $matches['version'][$i]); } ?> This returns an array with the detected browser as the key, and the version as the value, and also sets 'browser' and 'version' keys. For example on Firefox 3.5: <?php $ua = browser_info(); print_r($ua); /* Yields ... Array ( [firefox] => 3.5 [browser] => firefox [version] => 3.5 ) */ // Various browser tests you can do with the returned array ... if ($ua['firefox']) ... // true if ($ua['firefox'] > 3) ... // true if ($ua['firefox'] > 4) ... // false if ($ua['browser'] == 'firefox') ... // true if ($ua['version'] > 3.5) ... // true if ($ua['msie']) ... // false ('msie' key not defined) if ($ua['opera'] > 3) ... // false ('opera' key not defined) if ($ua['safari'] < 3) ... // false also ('safari' key not defined) ?> ---- Server IP: 208.69.120.35 Probable Submitter: 67.204.146.243 ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.get-browser.php Edit -- https://master.php.net/note/edit/92310 Del: integrated -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/92310/integrated Del: useless -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/92310/useless Del: bad code -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/92310/bad+code Del: spam -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/92310/spam Del: non-english -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/92310/non-english Del: in docs -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/92310/in+docs Del: other reasons-- https://master.php.net/note/delete/92310 Reject -- https://master.php.net/note/reject/92310 Search -- https://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php