README

A PHP library for detecting the browser, operating system (OS), platform, and device type through User-Agent parsing, designed with a focus on high performance and minimal memory usage during HTTP client parsing.
It uses a simple yet fast algorithm to accurately identify over 200 browsers/apps and more than 60 OS.
Parsing the most common browsers takes less than 0.0005 seconds, even on low-end shared hosting environments. For rare User-Agents, recognition times are under 0.0008 seconds in the same hosting conditions.
The library is exclusively tailored for current browsers and OS, omitting support for outdated environments that are no longer in use.
The library operates using a single file and does not rely on any third-party dependencies.

Requirements

This library requires PHP 5.3 or later.

Manual installation

1. Simply upload the library file BrowserDetection.php (located in the src directory) to your project;
2. Include the PHP library file using require_once:

<?php

require_once('BrowserDetection.php');

?>

Installation by using Composer

Install this library using Composer:

composer require foroco/php-browser-detection

Update library package by running a command:

composer update foroco/php-browser-detection

The first step requires the Composer autoloader:

<?php

require ('vendor/autoload.php');

// If you use PHP in Windows OS use another path style:
// require ('vendor\autoload.php');
?>

Usage

The library attempts to retrieve environment data from the HTTP_USER_AGENT header sent by the HTTP client.
The BrowserDetection PHP class within this library provides four public methods that return either an array or a JSON string containing the detected data extracted from the HTTP_USER_AGENT:

• getAll();
• getOS();
• getBrowser();
• getDevice();

First argument should contain User-Agent string from the HTTP_USER_AGENT header or your custom User-Agent string.
Second argument (optional) may contain 'JSON' if you want to get returned result as JSON format.

<?php

$Browser = new foroco\BrowserDetection();

$useragent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];

// Get all possible environment data (array):
$result = $Browser->getAll($useragent);

// Get OS data (array):
$result = $Browser->getOS($useragent);

// Get Browser data (array):
$result = $Browser->getBrowser($useragent);

// Get Device type data (array):
$result = $Browser->getDevice($useragent);

/*
Also methods may returned result as JSON string
Just use second argument of methods as 'JSON'
*/

// Get all possible environment data (JSON):
$result = $Browser->getAll($useragent, 'JSON');

print_r($result);

// ... etc
?>

The library class BrowserDetection also contains special method setTouchSupport() (optional, available from version 1.1).
This method is necessary to detect mobile browsers in Desktop Mode condition (Android and iOS).
For Desktop Mode detection setTouchSupport() method should call if browser supports Touch events.
Touch events detection is performed by client-side JavaScript code in the target browser. Example:

if (('ontouchstart' in window) || window.DocumentTouch && document instanceof DocumentTouch) {
// Touch Event detected
}

Description for returned variables

OS Type (os_type)
Returns type of operating system (OS).
All possible values:

• desktop
• mobile
• mixed
• unknown

OS Family (os_family)
Returns operating system (OS) family or unknown in cases of unable OS family recognition.
Example: windows, linux, unix etc.

OS Name (os_name)
Returns operating system (OS) name or unknown in cases of unable OS name recognition.
Example: Windows, Android, macOS, iOS etc.

OS Version (os_version)
Returns operating system (OS) version or 0 in cases of unable OS version recognition.
May contains numeric, string or mixed types OS versions.
In case of numeric OS version (e.g. Android) contains major and minor version parts values, e.g. 4.4, 8.1, 10, 14 etc.
In case of string OS version (e.g. macOS) contains string version name values, e.g. Mavericks, Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur etc.
For Windows may contains mixed version types values: 10, Vista, XP etc.

OS Title (os_title)
Returns operating system (OS) title which contains OS name and OS version together.
Also returns unknown if OS name is not recognized.

Device Type (device_type)
Returns device type based on some User-Agent data.
All possible values:

• desktop
• mobile
• tv
• console
• mediaplayer
• car
• watch
• unknown

Browser Name (browser_name)
Returns browser name or unknown in cases of unable browser name recognition.
Example: Chrome, Firefox, UC Browser, Huawei Browser, Vivaldi etc.

Browser Version (browser_version)
Returns browser version number or 0 in cases of unable browser version recognition.
Always contains numeric values (integer or float numbers).
Returns float number (e.g. 3.5, 10.5, 13.1) for some browsers which should contains both major and minor browser version parts (Safari, Vivaldi, PaleMoon etc).
Returns only major decimal browser version (e.g. 15, 37, 128) for other browsers which has a lot of major versions (Chrome, Firefox, Opera etc).

Browser Title (browser_title)
Returns browser title which contains browser name and browser version together.
Also returns unknown if browser name is not recognized.

Browser Chrome Original (browser_chrome_original)
Returns 1 number if browser recognized as original Google Chrome browser or returns 0 if it's not.

Browser Firefox Original (browser_firefox_original)
Returns 1 number if browser recognized as original Mozilla Firefox browser or returns 0 if it's not.

Browser Safari Original (browser_safari_original)
Returns 1 number if browser recognized as original Apple Safari browser or returns 0 if it's not.

Browser Chromium Version (browser_chromium_version)
Returns Chromium major engine version number if browser based on Chromium engine or returns 0 if it's not.

Browser Gecko Version (browser_gecko_version)
Returns Gecko major engine version number if browser based on Gecko engine or returns 0 if it's not.

Browser WebKit Version (browser_webkit_version)
Returns WebKit version engine number if browser based on WebKit engine or returns 0 if it's not.
Always float number value.

Browser Android Webview (browser_android_webview)
Returns 1 number if Android Webview mode detected or returns 0 if it's not.

Browser iOS Webview (browser_ios_webview)
Returns 1 number if iOS Webview mode detected or returns 0 if it's not.

Browser Desktop Mode (browser_desktop_mode)
Returns 1 number if mobile browser works in Desktop Mode or returns 0 if it's not detected.
setTouchSupport() method should call for Desktop Mode detection if browser supports Touch events.

64 Bits Mode (64bits_mode)
Returns 1 number if operating system (OS) and browser work together in 64-bit mode or returns 0 if 64-bit mode not detected.
Available only for getAll(); and getOS(); methods.

Usage Examples

Here are some examples to help you understand the library usage scenarios.

Detect All

To detect all possible environment data use:

<?php

$Browser = new foroco\BrowserDetection();

$useragent = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/80.0.4150.0 Iron Safari/537.36';
$result = $Browser->getAll($useragent);
print_r($result);

?>

Returns:

Array
(
    [os_type] => desktop
    [os_family] => windows
    [os_name] => Windows
    [os_version] => 7
    [os_title] => Windows 7
    [device_type] => desktop
    [browser_name] => Iron
    [browser_version] => 80
    [browser_title] => Iron 80
    [browser_chrome_original] => 0
    [browser_firefox_original] => 0
    [browser_safari_original] => 0
    [browser_chromium_version] => 80
    [browser_gecko_version] => 0
    [browser_webkit_version] => 0
    [browser_android_webview] => 0
    [browser_ios_webview] => 0
    [browser_desktop_mode] => 0
    [64bits_mode] => 1
)

OS Detection

To parse only OS data use:

<?php

$Browser = new foroco\BrowserDetection();

$useragent = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; arm_64; Android 14; SM-G965F) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/128.0.6613.99 YaBrowser/24.7.4.147 Mobile Safari/537.36';
$result = $Browser->getOS($useragent);
print_r($result);

?>

Returns:

Array
(
    [os_type] => mobile
    [os_family] => android
    [os_name] => Android
    [os_version] => 14
    [os_title] => Android 14
    [64bits_mode] => 1
)

Browser Detection

To parse only browser data use:

<?php

$Browser = new foroco\BrowserDetection();

$useragent = 'Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 17_6 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) CriOS/128.0.6613.98 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1';
$result = $Browser->getBrowser($useragent);
print_r($result);

?>

Returns:

Array
(
    [browser_name] => Chrome
    [browser_version] => 128
    [browser_title] => Chrome 128
    [browser_chrome_original] => 1
    [browser_firefox_original] => 0
    [browser_safari_original] => 0
    [browser_chromium_version] => 128
    [browser_gecko_version] => 0
    [browser_webkit_version] => 0
    [browser_android_webview] => 0
    [browser_ios_webview] => 0
    [browser_desktop_mode] => 0
)

Device Detection

To parse only device type data use:

<?php

$Browser = new foroco\BrowserDetection();

$useragent = 'Mozilla/5.0 (SMART-TV; Linux; Tizen 5.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) SamsungBrowser/2.2 Chrome/63.0.3239.84 TV Safari/537.36';
$result = $Browser->getDevice($useragent);
print_r($result);

?>

Returns:

Array
(
    [device_type] => tv
)

Desktop Mode Detection

To detect if mobile browser works in Desktop Mode use:

<?php

$Browser = new foroco\BrowserDetection();

$useragent = 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/128.0.0.0 Safari/537.36';
$Browser->setTouchSupport(); // Call if Touch events detected in browser by JavaScript code ('ontouchstart' in window)
$result = $Browser->getAll($useragent);
print_r($result);

?>

Returns:

Array
(
    [os_type] => mobile
    [os_family] => android
    [os_name] => Android
    [os_version] => 0
    [os_title] => Android
    [device_type] => mobile
    [browser_name] => Chrome
    [browser_version] => 128
    [browser_title] => Chrome 128
    [browser_chrome_original] => 1
    [browser_firefox_original] => 0
    [browser_safari_original] => 0
    [browser_chromium_version] => 128
    [browser_gecko_version] => 0
    [browser_webkit_version] => 0
    [browser_android_webview] => 0
    [browser_ios_webview] => 0
    [browser_desktop_mode] => 1
    [64bits_mode] => 0
)

Detect All (JSON)

To pasre all possible environment data and returns JSON format string:

<?php

$Browser = new foroco\BrowserDetection();

$useragent = 'Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/78.0.3904.108 Mobile Safari/537.36';
$result = $Browser->getAll($useragent, 'JSON');
print_r($result);

?>

Returns:

{"os_type":"mobile","os_family":"macintosh","os_name":"iOS","os_version":6,"os_title":"iOS 6","device_type":"mobile","browser_name":"Chrome","browser_version":78,"browser_title":"Chrome 78","browser_chrome_original":1,"browser_firefox_original":0,"browser_safari_original":0,"browser_chromium_version":78,"browser_gecko_version":0,"browser_webkit_version":0,"browser_android_webview":0,"browser_ios_webview":0,"browser_desktop_mode":0,"64bits_mode":0}

Benchmarking Test

Benchmarking was performed on a low-level shared hosting environment.
Test server configuration: RedHat Linux + LiteSpeed + PHP Extension.
Test conditions based on collection of random ~446000 non repeated real life User-Agent strings.

User-Agent recognition performance in PHP 7.3 (requests per second):

getAll: ~ 31000 rps
getOS: ~ 120000 rps
getBrowser: ~ 43000 rps
getDevice: ~ 70000 rps

Important notice

Unfortunately, the major browser engines have "frozen" the OS version information in the User-Agent header.
For example, on macOS, the OS version information in the User-Agent is "frozen" at the macOS Big Sur release level (Mac OS X 10_15_7).
On Windows, the OS version information is "frozen" in the User-Agent at the Windows 10 release level (Windows NT 10.0).

Recent releases of WebKit, Chromium, and Gecko-based browsers no longer include correct current OS version information in the User-Agent header.

See reference:

https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40167872
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1679929
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217364

One approach is to use the HTTP Client Hints headers, specifically the Sec-CH-UA-Platform-Version header. It's important to note, however, that only Chromium-based browsers currently support sending Client Hints headers.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2020-2024 Artem Murugov

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.