Koodoz Design

OK, this one’s a bit more technical than usual!

On a previous post, I discussed how you could use PHP’s get_browser() function to detect your users’ browser information. You may need to do this for a number of reasons: fixing small CSS details (for instance, positioning <button> elements next to input fields and getting them to display correctly) and preventing your users from seeing stuff reserved for the googlebot^† are some examples that come to mind.

If all you want is to load an extra style sheet for Internet Explorer, you can do so with conditional comments, but what about if you want to fix an Opera or Safari issue? What if you want to be nice to Konqueror users and fix that small detail that prevents your site from displaying exactly as you want it to? Enter PHP and its get_browser() function. According to the manual, the function will return an array or an object filled with information about the user’s browser.

However, I’ve heard many people complain about how the function just doesn’t work on their site. If you take a careful look at the manual, you’ll notice the following notice further down:

In order for this to work, your browscap configuration setting in php.ini must point to the correct location of the browscap.ini file on your system.

As it turns out, you need a file called browscap.ini (or php_browscap.ini) which doesn’t come bundled with PHP so chances are that your web host doesn’t have it installed by default.

† Careful with this one. You need very good reasons to serve the googlebot different content. Exercise common sense.

Checking for (and installing) browscap.ini

The first thing you need to do is to check if your system has browscap.ini installed and if not, can you do so by yourself. Open your favourite text editor and invoke the phpinfo() function. This will help you gather some information about your system:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

Save the file. You can name it info.php and upload it to your server’s root directory. Now, browse to said page and use the find tool on your browser and look for the word “browscap”. You should come across a table with three columns. Look at what the values are next to the word browscap. If there’s a path to a file, you’re set! Skip to the next section of this post. However, if you see no value, you need to do a little bit more work, so keep reading.

The PHP manual points users to this file, which is kindly maintained by Gary Keith, so koodoz to him. Download it and upload it to your server, preferably outside the root www folder. Keep in mind the file’s absolute path on your server.

Now go back to that info.php page and look for Configuration File (php.ini) Path. This is where your PHP configuration file is located. Download the php.ini file and open it with your text editor.

N.B: If your host doesn’t give you access to this folder, they need to do all the work. Get in touch with them and ask them to install browscap.ini.

Again, look for the word browscap and enter the absolute path to your newly-uploaded browscap file. After you’re done, it should look something like this:

[browscap]
browscap = /path/to/your/php_browscap.ini

Save and re-upload the file. Depending on your host, they might need to restart the http server, but if you have access to the php.ini file, chances are you don’t, so that’s it. If everything’s been done correctly, you can now use get_browser().

Using the get_browser() function

There are millions of ways in which you can use the power of this function. To start, open your text editor and create the following file:

<?php
$browser = get_browser(null, true);
?>

<pre>
<?php print_r($browser); ?>
</pre>

Take a look at the results, they’re pretty detailed! $browser['platform'], $browser['browser'] and $browser['majorver'] show you the operating system, browser and version respectively (bo-ring!), but then you have stuff like $browser['cssversion'], $browser['issyndicationreader'] and $browser['ismobiledevice'] which can be used to do all sorts of things! Endless potential, I say.

Anyway, hope this was useful and feel free to comment to discuss or get some extra help :)