How to determine the browser of the user using PHP?
So that if the users browser is IE then the variable $alert="onbeforeunload" and if it is not IE, for example Firefox (else) then $alert="onload.
Help is much appreciated.
Thanks
Also please note that I can not install browscap.ini on my PHP server.
See if this code works for you
<?php
function detect_ie(){
return (sizeof(explode("MSIE",$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])) > 1);
}
if (detect_ie())
$event = "onbeforeunload";
else
$event = "onload";
?>
You can't. Not with 100% accuracy. The best method that is to check the user agent, however the user is free not to supply it, or fake it so try to avoid relying on it.
$ua = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
If the browser is IE, it should (roughtly) match (Where # is a number)
Mozilla/#.0 (compatible; MSIE #.##;
For which the regex would be something like
'~^Mozilla/[0-9]\.0 (compatible;\s+MSIE~i'
Alternatively you could just check for the string "MSIE" which would be simpler and slightly less strict.
But as #Michal said, there are other (better) implmentations on the get_browser manual page
use $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']
Check if it contains "IE" directly followed by a number.
I'd rather do this in javascript itself though.
if (typeof window.onbeforeunload !== "undefined") window.onbeforeunload = myFunc;
else window.onunload = myFunc;
Javascript libraries are much better to detect and handle different browser behaviour. Just let a mature library like jQuery handle this and you'll be fine.
Related
I want to check the useragent processor architecture either using PHP or JavaScript and then redirect the user to a domain according to the architecture they're using.
E.G.
if($Bits32){ //redirect to somewhere
} elseif($Bits64){ //redirect to somewhere
}
I tried using the following code but it didn't work correctly:
if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf("WOW64") != -1 ||
navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Win64") != -1 ){
document.write("This is a 64 bit OS"); // 64 bit action
} else {
document.write("<br><br>");
document.write("32 bit OS"); //32bit action
}
PHP Can't detect it as scripts runs on server-side. You can try with userAgent as you are trying now, but you have to remember that not everybody uses default full information, so there will always be examples of people on whom it doesn't work.
This could be helpful though it wont solve it completly.
http://blog.endflow.net/?p=285
tl;dr - look for more thatn WOW64 and Win64 ;) also as you can see different apss gives different UserAgents so like i told you - won't work for all.
I need to limit what browsers can user use to view on my page. I want to allow only Chrome, FireFox 4+ and all WebKit based browsers. If user use i.e. explorer, PHP will produce output i.e.: "You have not supported browser, use Chrome, Firefox 4+ or WebKit based browser!"
How can I do it?
PHP sniffer is a library that handles extracting information about the user and user-agent (browser).
It uses the same data that get_browser() or $_SEREVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] can give you but it formats it into a nicely structured object that you can use in your code.
Use $_SERVER\['HTTP_USER_AGENT'\] or get_browser().
But you should really ask yourself why this is necessary. If your site doesn't work with all feature, than it's ok to show a message saying:
Please upgrade your browser in order to use all features.
You can also detect whether specific JS functions/objects exists so you won't run into Undefined identifier errors (credits to epascarello).
$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] will give you browser details, and from that you can work your way up to verification good luck
This may be so lame, since I am PHP newbie but, I would check if someone is using Mozilla (firefox)
by doing this:
$browser = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
if (strpos($browser,'Mozilla') !== false) {
echo 'You are using Mozilla';
} else {
echo 'You are not using Mozilla';
}
You can check server variable:
<?php
echo $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
?>
Reasoning for this Question
I am aware that browser detection can never be 100% reliable as the User Agent header can always be forged, however, I am not bothered by this.
Although there are many questions on this topic, they all seem to be quite old, so to get an up to date answer I felt I should ask this question again.
I am currently detecting the browser name and version server side using the PHP browscap, and then returning the name and version into javascript variables (not a very good method). The reason why I need to do this is simply to display a message to visitors if they are not using a supported browser.
Current method (something similar):
<script type="text/javascript">
var browser = new Array();
browser['browser'] = '<?php echo $browser_name; ?>';
browser['version'] = '<?php echo $browser_version; ?>';
browser['error'] = '<?php echo $browser_error; ?>';
</script>
It would be much better to do this client side as the browscap can be quite slow, and it would prevent me having to pass values into javascript variables from PHP. If you think using PHP is a better method then please state in your answer, this is just my opinion.
Question
Therefore, my question quite simply, is the following link a reliable method for determining the browser name and version?
Javascript Detect
I am aware that new browsers will need to be added to this, this does not bother me. I am more concerned about whether the algorithm used is reliable.
Thanks in advance
UPDATE 1
To see what I mean, take a look at https://www.icloud.com/ in Internet Explorer 7 or less. You will receive a message saying that the browser is not supported. This is easy to do for IE as you can simply use the <!--[if gt IE..., however, I need to test all browsers.
This does not look right, you can fetch browser information from Javascript. No need to mix JS and PHP code to do that.
You can do something like this to fetch, and detect user browser with just JavaScript:
var userAgent = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
var old = false;
// Internet Explorer 7
if (userAgent.indexOf('msie 7.0b') !== -1) { old = true; }
else if (userAgent.indexOf('msie 7.0') !== -1) { old = true; }
// Internet Explorer 6
else if (userAgent.indexOf('msie 6.1') !== -1) { old = true; }
else if (userAgent.indexOf('msie 6.01') !== -1) { old = true; }
else if (userAgent.indexOf('msie 6.0b') !== -1) { old = true; }
else if (userAgent.indexOf('msie 6.0') !== -1) { old = true; }
...
// Detect any other browser versions you consider old
if(old = true) {
// Show notification and alert users that they are using old browser
}
This is how you can do it using JS, but you can also use HTML to achieve this:
<!--[if lte IE 6]>
// include your .css style or do whatever you want to alert users their browser is old
<![endif]-->
Short answer to your question is YES, its wrong to detect user browser the way you do it, since you can do it with plain JavaScript, or even with HTML. No need to mix PHP and JS code here, and at the end, both PHP and JS will get the same UserAgent info.
Explanation
After extensive research and discussing amongst other developers, it is clear that there is no reliable method for retrieving the browser name and version from the User Agent. This is down to several reasons:
The format of a browsers User Agent can change at any time if the developers of the browser so wish to do so. This could immediately prevent some scripts from working correctly.
Users can forge their User Agents to mimic other browsers, and therefore would appear to be using a browser they are not.
Possible Solutions
Whilst I hugely discourage the use of these scripts as they could stop working at the release of an update to any browser anytime, if you do wish to detect the browser name and version in Javascript then I would advise using this script:
Javascript Detect
However, the most reliable method for retrieving the details of the browser is without a doubt the browscap supplied by Gary Keith. The browscap project offers extensive information about each browser and OS gathered from the User Agent. It is very easy to implement and even easier to use. To read more, take a look at:
Gary Keith - Browscap
If you choose to use the browscap by Gary Keith, you will need to ensure it is updated weekly at the very least.
Answer
Whilst I am contradicting myself with this answer, it is clear that detecting the browser information with any sort of script is not advised. The only reliable method of browser detection is that of the Internet Explorer HTML conditions, and as stated, these only cover Internet Explorer.
Try to avoid browser specific functions and notices, and make use of the built in features such as:
media="only screen and (device-width: 768px)"
and
<!--[if IE 8]>I am IE 8<![endif]-->
This question needs an updated answer. I think the best option these days for client-side detection is WURFL.
Its an updated library of devices based on Useragents - think Browscap for the client side.
Load the JS and it returns JSON based on the device that requested the js. Perfect!
<script type="text/javascript" src="//wurfl.io/wurfl.js"></script>
Because it does the parsing on the WURFL server side, you need to load the js remotely and not save it in your dir tree.
A super easy
WURFL.is_mobile
is all it takes to determine mobile for example.
Good luck.
You could try having a look at navigator.appName and navigator.userAgent.
The yepnopejs IE detection (!ie prefixes) works by utilizing the MS conditional comments.
A short snippet for detecting versions of IE prior to IE10 in JavaScript without resorting to user-agent sniffing.
while (
div.innerHTML = '<!--[if gt IE ' + (++v) + ']><i></i><![endif]-->'
);
// …
https://github.com/SlexAxton/yepnope.js/blob/master/prefixes/yepnope.ie-prefix.js
yepnope usage example:
yepnope({
load: ['normal.js', 'ie6!ie7!ie-patch.js'] // patch for ie6 or ie7 only
});
You can use a perfect plugin for this information written in jQuery (like javascript)
look at this link:
https://github.com/jquery/plugins.jquery.com
Be sure to do feature detection instead of browser detection when you want to determine if a certain feature is available in a browser, apply bugfixes, etc.
Due to the CSS3 and HTML5, I would like to check what browser (and version) the visitor is using. What is the best way of doing that? I know that most ways screw up certain checks, for example phones or tablets, as well as some uncommon browsers, but there ought to be a way to get that information properly?
I recommend you take a look at Modernizr. It's a js library that does what you need
No need to have JS libraries or other included files!
$browser = get_browser(null, true);
echo $browser['browser'];
This will return something like "Firefox," "Opera," "Safari," etc.
You can use PHP for this
<?php
echo $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] . "\n\n";
?>
$browser = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
OR you can use google analytic to view live data of your visitor
I want to send some info back to my database when a user prints a certain web page. I can do this in IE with onbeforeprint() and onafterprint() but I would like to browser agnostic way of doing the same thing. Don't care which combination of technologies I have to use (PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, HTML) so long as it gets done. Any ideas?
EDIT:
Still having some problems with this. I tried the putting my function in my Print.css as an image, but I am messing it up some how. Then I tried just adding a event listener, but I cannot get that to work quite right either. If anyone can provide some more details on how I might call a function right before print in ANY browser I would appreciate it.
EDIT:
I am giving up on this for now, I have settled with another way of doing what I want. I look forward to the day when FireFox supports onbeforeprint() and onafterprint().
Many browsers now support window.matchMedia. This API allows you to detect when CSS media queries go into effect (e.g., rotating the screen or printing the document). For a cross-browser approach, combine window.matchMedia with window.onbeforeprint/window.onafterprint.
The following may result in multiple calls to beforePrint() and afterPrint() (for example, Chrome fires the listener every time the print preview is regenerated). This may or may not be desirable depending on the particular processing you're doing in response to the print.
if ('matchMedia' in window) {
// Chrome, Firefox, and IE 10 support mediaMatch listeners
window.matchMedia('print').addListener(function(media) {
if (media.matches) {
beforePrint();
} else {
// Fires immediately, so wait for the first mouse movement
$(document).one('mouseover', afterPrint);
}
});
} else {
// IE and Firefox fire before/after events
$(window).on('beforeprint', beforePrint);
$(window).on('afterprint', afterPrint);
}
More: http://tjvantoll.com/2012/06/15/detecting-print-requests-with-javascript/
I m not sure other browsers will allow you to. You could of course specify an image somewhere in a print stylesheet, which probably only will be called on a print, for the onbeforeprint
Try masking the native window.print() with your own...
// hide our vars from the global scope
(function(){
// make a copy of the native window.print
var _print = this.print;
// create a new window.print
this.print = function () {
// if `onbeforeprint` exists, call it.
if (this.onbeforeprint) onbeforeprint(this);
// call the original `window.print`.
_print();
// if `onafterprint` exists, call it.
if (this.onafterprint) onafterprint(this);
}
}())
Updated: comments.
I think that it's simply not possible to this properly. Or at least - not with any technology I know nor with any of the answers given previously.
Both using onafterprint and using serverside dynamic-image-generating script would tell you that the page was printed even when the visitor merely went to print preview mode and then canceled out.
However, I would like to learn how to get the proper information, so that I can be sure that page was actually printed.