Capture browser settings, OS, etc 2

[takethapowerback]

I need to write a script that captures browser settings, OS, etc. automatically as soon as a user visits our site. I also need the script to post each users info to a database. Has anyone done this before or maybe someone can steer me in the right direction with this. Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

TTPB

 

[r937]

here's some code to display CGI variables --

<CFOUTPUT>
<h3>cgi parameters</h3>
<table border=&quot;1&quot; cellpadding=&quot;2&quot; cellspacing=&quot;0&quot;>
<CFLOOP COLLECTION=&quot;#cgi#&quot; ITEM=&quot;foo&quot;>
<tr><td>cgi.#foo#&nbsp;</td><td>#cgi[foo]#&nbsp;</td></tr>
</CFLOOP>
</table>
</CFOUTPUT>

saving CGI variables into a database would be extra work (and incidentally, slow your site down -- is there a reason you can't get things like browser from your site logs?)

rudy

 

[csteinhilber]

Sure.

What you want to do is use the cgi.HTTP_USER_AGENT variable. This will return the user agent string. This is the primary method of the browser to identify itself to the web server.

The string will look something like:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows NT 5.0)

The trick is parsing it into something useful.
Take a look at the latest browsercap file (

http://www.cyscape.com/browscap).

It should get you started down the road of what you want to search for to identify particular browsers.

Something like:

<cfset searchpoint = FindNoCase(&quot; MSIE &quot;,cgi.HTTP_USER_AGENT)>
<cfif searchpoint gt 0>
	<cfset mybrowser = &quot;ie&quot;>
</cfif>

You can get as in depth and complex as you would like... or keep it simple (it would just mean some older browsers are mis-identified... which isn't necessarily the end of the world).

Or, of course, you could buy BrowserHawk and let cyScape do all the hard work (why reinvent the wheel).