README

The Wolfcast BrowserDetection PHP class facilitates the identification of the user's environment such as Web browser, version, platform family, platform version or if it's a mobile device or not.

This class will try to detect what the user is using from the HTTP_USER_AGENT string sent by the Web browser. A good way to use the class would be to gather user statistics or to report the browser and version used for informational purposes. A bad way to use the class would be to serve content based on the browser and version used. Sites that rely on the user-agent string should be updated to modern techniques, such as feature detection, adaptive layout, and other modern practices.

Always keep in mind that HTTP_USER_AGENT can be easily spoofed by the user.

Features

The Wolfcast BrowserDetection PHP class is the most accurate detection class. It has been tested with 14000+ different user agent strings and it have a 99.95% accuracy ratio!

Natively detects the following browsers:

• Android
• BlackBerry
• BlackBerry Tablet OS
• Chrome
• Edge
• Firebird
• Firefox
• GNU IceCat
• GNU IceWeasel
• iCab
• Internet Explorer
• Internet Explorer Mobile
• Konqueror
• Lynx
• Mozilla
• MSN TV
• Netscape
• Nokia Browser
• Opera
• Opera Mini
• Opera Mobile
• Phoenix
• Safari
• Samsung Internet
• UC Browser

You can also easily add custom rules to support other browsers not natively supported!

Natively detects the following robots:

• Bingbot
• Googlebot
• MSNBot
• W3C Validator
• Yahoo! Multimedia
• Yahoo! Slurp

You can also easily add custom rules to support other robots not natively supported!

Natively detects the following platforms:

• Android
• BlackBerry
• Chrome OS
• FreeBSD
• iOS
• Linux
• Macintosh
• NetBSD
• Nokia
• OpenBSD
• OpenSolaris
• Symbian
• Windows
• Windows CE
• Windows Phone

You can also easily add custom rules to support other platforms not natively supported!

Requirements

Requires PHP 5.3 or newer (tested with PHP 8.3.6, 7.4.33 and 5.6.40).

Demo and full documentation

You can try the live demo of the class and you can read the documentation.

Installation

You can add this library as a local, per-project dependency to your project using Composer (Packagist link):

composer require wolfcast/browser-detection

You can also manually install this library by adding BrowserDetection.php (found in the lib directory) to your project and then require_once the library where needed.

Usage

require_once('BrowserDetection.php');

$browser = new Wolfcast\BrowserDetection();
if ($browser->getName() == Wolfcast\BrowserDetection::BROWSER_FIREFOX &&
    $browser->compareVersions($browser->getVersion(), '5.0') >= 0) {
    echo 'You are using FireFox version 5 or greater.';
}

History

Correctly identifying what Web browser your users are using is an incredibly complex task. If you ever tried to implement something like this you quickly saw how this can become a code mess. Only a few libraries exist and they often get deprecated and becomes abandonware. This is why we created our own detection engine. We didn't start from scratch. The class is a heavily updated version of Chris Schuld's Browser class version 1.9 (which was unmaintained for a couple of years). Chris' class was based on the original work from Gary White.

License

SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT OR LGPL-3.0-only