README

NAME
    HTTP::BrowserDetect - Determine Web browser, version, and platform from
    an HTTP user agent string

VERSION
    Version 1.07

SYNOPSIS
        use HTTP::BrowserDetect;

        my $browser = new HTTP::BrowserDetect($user_agent_string);

        # Detect operating system
        if ($browser->windows) {
          if ($browser->winnt) ...
          if ($brorwser->win95) ...
        }
        print $browser->mac;

        # Detect browser vendor and version
        print $browser->netscape;
        print $browser->ie;
        if (browser->major(4)) {
        if ($browser->minor() > .5) {
            ...
        }
        }
        if ($browser->version() > 4) {
          ...;
        }

        # Process a different user agent string
        $browser->user_agent($another_user_agent_string);

DESCRIPTION
    The HTTP::BrowserDetect object does a number of tests on an HTTP user
    agent string. The results of these tests are available via methods of
    the object.

    This module is based upon the JavaScript browser detection code
    available at
    http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/sniffer/browser_type.html.

INSTALLATION
    In most cases, you can just issue the following commands:

      perl Build.PL
      ./Build
      ./Build test
      ./Build install

    Please see the documentation for Module::Build if you have questions
    about installing to custom locations etc.

CONSTRUCTOR AND STARTUP
  new()
        HTTP::BrowserDetect->new( $user_agent_string )

    The constructor may be called with a user agent string specified.
    Otherwise, it will use the value specified by $ENV{'HTTP_USER_AGENT'},
    which is set by the web server when calling a CGI script.

    You may also use a non-object-oriented interface. For each method, you
    may call HTTP::BrowserDetect::method_name(). You will then be working
    with a default HTTP::BrowserDetect object that is created behind the
    scenes.

SUBROUTINES/METHODS
  user_agent($user_agent_string)
    Returns the value of the user agent string. When called with a
    parameter, it resets the user agent and reperforms all tests on the
    string. This way you can process a series of user agent strings (from a
    log file, perhaps) without creating a new HTTP::BrowserDetect object
    each time.

  language()
    Returns the language string as it is found in the user agent string.
    This will be in the form of an upper case 2 character code. ie: EN, DE,
    etc

  country()
    Returns the country string as it may be found in the user agent string.
    This will be in the form of an upper case 2 character code. ie: US, DE,
    etc

Detecting Browser Version
    Please note that that the version(), major() and minor() methods have
    been superceded as of release 1.07 of this module. They are not yet
    deprecated, but should be replaced with public_version(), public_major()
    and public_minor() in new development.

    The reasoning behind this is that version() method will, in the case of
    Safari, return the Safari/XXX numbers even when Version/XXX numbers are
    present in the UserAgent string. Because this behaviour has been in
    place for so long, some clients may have come to rely upon it. So, it
    has been retained in the interest of "bugwards compatibility", but in
    almost all cases, the numbers returned by public_version(),
    public_major() and public_minor() will be what you are looking for.

  public_version()
    Returns the browser version as a floating-point number.

  public_major()
    Returns the integer portion of the browser version.

  public_minor()
    Returns the decimal portion of the browser version as a floating-point
    number less than 1. For example, if the version is 4.05, this method
    returns .05; if the version is 4.5, this method returns .5.

    On occasion a version may have more than one decimal point, such as
    'Wget/1.4.5'. The minor version does not include the second decimal
    point, or any further digits or decimals.

  version($version)
    Returns the version as a floating-point number. If passed a parameter,
    returns true if it is equal to the version specified by the user agent
    string.

  major($major)
    Returns the integer portion of the browser version. If passed a
    parameter, returns true if it equals the browser major version.

  minor($minor)
    Returns the decimal portion of the browser version as a floating-point
    number less than 1. For example, if the version is 4.05, this method
    returns .05; if the version is 4.5, this method returns .5. This is a
    change in behavior from previous versions of this module, which returned
    a string.

    If passed a parameter, returns true if equals the minor version.

    On occasion a version may have more than one decimal point, such as
    'Wget/1.4.5'. The minor version does not include the second decimal
    point, or any further digits or decimals.

  beta($beta)
    Returns any the beta version, consisting of any non-numeric characters
    after the version number. For instance, if the user agent string is
    'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0b2; Windows NT)', returns 'b2'. If
    passed a parameter, returns true if equal to the beta version. If the
    beta starts with a dot, it is thrown away.

Detecting Rendering Engine
  engine_string()
    Returns one of the following:

    Gecko, KHTML, MSIE

    Returns undef if no string can be found.

  engine_version()
    Returns the version number of the rendering engine. Currently this only
    returns a version number for Gecko. Returns undef for all other engines.

  engine_major()
    Returns the major version number of the rendering engine. Currently this
    only returns a version number for Gecko. Returns undef for all other
    engines.

  engine_minor()
    Returns the minor version number of the rendering engine. Currently this
    only returns a version number for Gecko. Returns undef for all other
    engines.

Detecting OS Platform and Version
    The following methods are available, each returning a true or false
    value. Some methods also test for the operating system version. The
    indentations below show the hierarchy of tests (for example, win2k is
    considered a type of winnt, which is a type of win32)

  windows()
        win16 win3x win31
        win32
            winme win95 win98
            winnt
                win2k winxp win2k3 winvista win7

  dotnet()
  mac()
    mac68k macppc macosx

  os2()
  unix()
      sun sun4 sun5 suni86 irix irix5 irix6 hpux hpux9 hpux10
      aix aix1 aix2 aix3 aix4 linux sco unixware mpras reliant
      dec sinix freebsd bsd

  vms()
  amiga()
    It may not be possibile to detect Win98 in Netscape 4.x and earlier. On
    Opera 3.0, the userAgent string includes "Windows 95/NT4" on all Win32,
    so you can't distinguish between Win95 and WinNT.

  os_string()
    Returns one of the following strings, or undef. This method exists
    solely for compatibility with the HTTP::Headers::UserAgent module.

      Win95, Win98, WinNT, Win2K, WinXP, Win2K3, WinVista, Win7, Mac, Mac OS X,
      Win3x, OS2, Unix, Linux

Detecting Browser Vendor
    The following methods are available, each returning a true or false
    value. Some methods also test for the browser version, saving you from
    checking the version separately.

   netscape nav2 nav3 nav4 nav4up nav45 nav45up navgold nav6 nav6up
   gecko
   mozilla
   firefox
   safari
   crhome
   ie ie3 ie4 ie4up ie5 ie55 ie6 ie7 ie8
   neoplanet neoplanet2
   mosaic
   aol aol3 aol4 aol5 aol6
   webtv
   opera opera3 opera4 opera5 opera6 opera7
   lynx links
   emacs
   staroffice
   lotusnotes
   icab
   konqueror
   java
   curl
   realplayer
    Netscape 6, even though its called six, in the userAgent string has
    version number 5. The nav6 and nav6up methods correctly handle this
    quirk. The firefox text correctly detects the older-named versions of
    the browser (Phoenix, Firebird)

  browser_string()
    Returns undef on failure. Otherwise returns one of the following:

    Firefox, Safari, Chrome, MSIE, etc

    To see a complete list of possible browser strings, check the
    browser_string() method in the source code.

  gecko_version()
    If a Gecko rendering engine is used (as in Mozilla or Firebird), returns
    the version of the renderer (e.g. 1.3a, 1.7, 1.8) This might be more
    useful than the particular browser name or version when correcting for
    quirks in different versions of this rendering engine. If no Gecko
    browser is being used, or the version number can't be detected, returns
    undef.

Detecting Other Devices
    The following methods are available, each returning a true or false
    value.

   android
   audrey
   avantgo
   blackberry
   iopener
   iphone
   ipod
   palm
   wap
  mobile()
    Returns true if the browser appears to belong to a handheld device.

  robot()
    Returns true if the user agent appears to be a robot, spider, crawler,
    or other automated Web client.

    The following additional methods are available, each returning a true or
    false value. This is by no means a complete list of robots that exist on
    the Web.

   wget
   getright
   yahoo
   altavista
   lycos
   infoseek
   lwp
   webcrawler
   linkexchange
   slurp
   google
   puf
AUTHOR
    Lee Semel, lee@semel.net (Original Author)

    Peter Walsham (co-maintainer)

    Olaf Alders, "olaf at wundercounter.com" (co-maintainer)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
    Thanks to the following for their contributions:

    Leonardo Herrera

    Denis F. Latypoff

    merlynkline

    Simon Waters

    Toni Cebrin

    Florian Merges

    david.hilton.p

    Steve Purkis

    Andrew McGregor

    Robin Smidsrod

    Richard Noble

    Josh Ritter

    Mike Clarke

    Marc Sebastian Pelzer

    Alexey Surikov

TO DO
    The _engine() method currently only handles Gecko. It needs to be
    expanded to handle other rendering engines.

    POD coverage is also not 100%.

    If you're able to help out with anything on the TO DO list, please do. A
    great deal of the latest improvements have come from patches via RT and
    GitHub pull requests. If you're able to submit changes via GitHub, I'm
    generally able to get them into a new release fairly quickly.

SEE ALSO
    "The Ultimate JavaScript Client Sniffer, Version 3.0",
    http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/sniffer/browser_type.html.

    "Browser ID (User-Agent) Strings"
    http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/browser_ids.htm

    perl(1), HTTP::Headers, HTTP::Headers::UserAgent.

SUPPORT
    You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

        perldoc HTTP::BrowserDetect

    You can also look for information at:

    *   GitHub Source Repository

        <http://github.com/oalders/http-browserdetect>

    *   RT: CPAN's request tracker

        <http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=HTTP-BrowserDetect>

    *   AnnoCPAN: Annotated CPAN documentation

        <http://annocpan.org/dist/HTTP-BrowserDetect>

    *   CPAN Ratings

        <http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/HTTP-BrowserDetect>

    *   Search CPAN

        <http://search.cpan.org/dist/HTTP-BrowserDetect/>

BUGS AND LIMITATIONS
    The biggest limitation at this point is the test suite, which really
    needs to have many more UserAgent strings to test against.

    Patches are certainly welcome, with many thanks to the many
    contributions which have already been received. The preferred method of
    patching would be to fork the GitHub repo and then send me a pull
    requests, but plain old patch files are also welcome.

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT
    Copyright 1999-2010 Lee Semel. All rights reserved. This program is free
    software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms
    as Perl itself.