User Agent Class

The User Agent Class provides functions that help identify information about the browser, mobile device, or robot visiting your site.

Using the User Agent Class

Initializing the Class

The User Agent class is always available directly from the current IncomingRequest instance. By default, you will have a request instance in your controller that you can retrieve the User Agent class from:

$agent = $this->request->getUserAgent();

User Agent Definitions

The user agent name definitions are located in a config file located at: app/Config/UserAgents.php. You may add items to the various user agent arrays if needed.

Example

When the User Agent class is initialized it will attempt to determine whether the user agent browsing your site is a web browser, a mobile device, or a robot. It will also gather the platform information if it is available:

$agent = $this->request->getUserAgent();

if ($agent->isBrowser())
{
        $currentAgent = $agent->getBrowser().' '.$agent->getVersion();
}
elseif ($agent->isRobot())
{
        $currentAgent = $this->agent->robot();
}
elseif ($agent->isMobile())
{
        $currentAgent = $agent->getMobile();
}
else
{
        $currentAgent = 'Unidentified User Agent';
}

echo $currentAgent;

echo $agent->getPlatform(); // Platform info (Windows, Linux, Mac, etc.)

Class Reference

CodeIgniter\HTTP\UserAgent
isBrowser([$key = NULL])
Parameters:
  • $key (string) – Optional browser name
Returns:

TRUE if the user agent is a (specified) browser, FALSE if not
Return type:

bool

Returns TRUE/FALSE (boolean) if the user agent is a known web browser.

if ($agent->isBrowser('Safari'))
{
        echo 'You are using Safari.';
}
elseif ($agent->isBrowser())
{
        echo 'You are using a browser.';
}

Note

The string “Safari” in this example is an array key in the list of browser definitions. You can find this list in app/Config/UserAgents.php if you want to add new browsers or change the strings.

isMobile([$key = NULL])
Parameters:
  • $key (string) – Optional mobile device name
Returns:

TRUE if the user agent is a (specified) mobile device, FALSE if not
Return type:

bool

Returns TRUE/FALSE (boolean) if the user agent is a known mobile device.

if ($agent->isMobile('iphone'))
{
        echo view('iphone/home');
}
elseif ($agent->isMobile())
{
        echo view('mobile/home');
}
else
{
        echo view('web/home');
}
isRobot([$key = NULL])
Parameters:
  • $key (string) – Optional robot name
Returns:

TRUE if the user agent is a (specified) robot, FALSE if not
Return type:

bool

Returns TRUE/FALSE (boolean) if the user agent is a known robot.

Note

The user agent library only contains the most common robot definitions. It is not a complete list of bots. There are hundreds of them so searching for each one would not be very efficient. If you find that some bots that commonly visit your site are missing from the list you can add them to your app/Config/UserAgents.php file.

isReferral()
Returns:TRUE if the user agent is a referral, FALSE if not
Return type:bool

Returns TRUE/FALSE (boolean) if the user agent was referred from another site.

getBrowser()
Returns:Detected browser or an empty string
Return type:string

Returns a string containing the name of the web browser viewing your site.

getVersion()
Returns:Detected browser version or an empty string
Return type:string

Returns a string containing the version number of the web browser viewing your site.

getMobile()
Returns:Detected mobile device brand or an empty string
Return type:string

Returns a string containing the name of the mobile device viewing your site.

getRobot()
Returns:Detected robot name or an empty string
Return type:string

Returns a string containing the name of the robot viewing your site.

getPlatform()
Returns:Detected operating system or an empty string
Return type:string

Returns a string containing the platform viewing your site (Linux, Windows, OS X, etc.).

getReferrer()
Returns:Detected referrer or an empty string
Return type:string

The referrer, if the user agent was referred from another site. Typically you’ll test for this as follows:

if ($agent->isReferral())
{
        echo $agent->referrer();
}
getAgentString()
Returns:Full user agent string or an empty string
Return type:string

Returns a string containing the full user agent string. Typically it will be something like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060613 Camino/1.0.2
parse($string)
Parameters:
  • $string (string) – A custom user-agent string
Return type:

void

Parses a custom user-agent string, different from the one reported by the current visitor.