browser info

[RobBroekhuis]

I'm writing a forum application, and am trying to log which browsers/platforms my users use, so I can make sure everything works properly for them. I have used two approaches for gathering browser information: on login, I run Javascript client-side to populate a hidden form input that gets returned to php. And I also use php's get_browser function on the server side. The former approach has so far been vastly more successful - it always returns something useful, if not always perfectly accurate. The success rate of the get_browser call seems rather small. If I could, I'd prefer to keep this server-side, but for now it looks like client-side gives me better results. What are the pitfalls with get_browser?


Rob

 

[DRJ478]

Have you considered evaulating your web server logs? Browser identification is stored in the HTTP requests and log procesing software such as Analog can extract it easily.

 

[RobBroekhuis]

Yes, I can statistical info from the logs. But I want to be able to link a particular user with the browser he's using, so that I can ask that user specific questions about how my site works for him. Also, I'm simply curious why get_browser seems to fail to return pertinent information a good part of the time.

Rob

 

[sleipnir214]

Under what circumstances does it fail to return information?

Is it for a particular browser brand and version?

Or does it on one call with a particular browser return information, but not for the next using the same browser?

If it's the former, then your browscap.ini file does not contain information for that browser.

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[sleipnir214]

Keep in mind, too, that the information returned from get_browser() only reports what the user's browser can do, not what that user's browser is currently configured to do.


Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

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TANSTAAFL!!

 

[RobBroekhuis]

I'm going to have to look into this a little further. I can't access browscap.ini myself (it's on a host server), so I don't know if it's the most up-to-date version. I'm pretty sure get_browser has failed for some users with common browsers (as if the script just didn't receive the USER_AGENT information at all). It certainly fails for Mozilla Firebird (for which it returns "default browser&quot.
I will continue logging both client-side and server-side results until I understand the limitations of each.
Thanks for your helpful comments!


Rob