PHP get_browser function

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get_browser

(PHP 3, PHP 4, PHP 5)

Attempts to determine the capabilities of the user’s browser, by looking
up the browser’s information in the browscap.ini
file.

The User Agent to be analyzed. By default, the value of HTTP
User-Agent header is used; however, you can alter this (i.e., look up
another browser’s info) by passing this parameter.

You can bypass this parameter with a NULL value.

If set to TRUE, this function will return an array
instead of an object.

The information is returned in an object or an array which will contain
various data elements representing, for instance, the browser’s major and
minor version numbers and ID string; TRUE/FALSE values for features
such as frames, JavaScript, and cookies; and so forth.

The cookies value simply means that the browser
itself is capable of accepting cookies and does not mean the user has
enabled the browser to accept cookies or not. The only way to test if
cookies are accepted is to set one with setcookie(),
reload, and check for the value.

Example 1. Listing all information about the users browser

echo $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] . "\n\n";
 
$browser = get_browser(null, true);
print_r($browser);

The above example will output
something similar to:

Array
(
[browser_name_regex] => ^mozilla/5\.0 (windows; .; windows nt 5\.1; .*rv:.*) gecko/.* firefox/0\.9.*$
[browser_name_pattern] => Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; ?; Windows NT 5.1; *rv:*) Gecko/* Firefox/0.9*
[parent] => Firefox 0.9
[platform] => WinXP
[browser] => Firefox
[version] => 0.9
[majorver] => 0
[minorver] => 9
[css] => 2
[frames] => 1
[iframes] => 1
[tables] => 1
[cookies] => 1
[backgroundsounds] =>
[vbscript] =>

 => 1

    [javaapplets] => 1

    [activexcontrols] =>

    [cdf] =>

    [aol] =>

    [beta] => 1

    [win16] =>

    [crawler] =>

    [stripper] =>

    [wap] =>

    [netclr] =>

)

  
Notes
Note:

    In order for this to work, your browscap configuration setting in

    php.ini must point to the correct location of the

    browscap.ini file on your system.

   

    browscap.ini is not bundled with PHP, but you may

    find an up-to-date php_browscap.ini file here.

   

    While browscap.ini contains information on

    many browsers, it relies on user updates to keep the database

    current. The format of the file is fairly self-explanatory.