NAME¶
Parse::HTTP::UserAgent - Parser for the User Agent string
SYNOPSIS¶
use Parse::HTTP::UserAgent;
my $ua = Parse::HTTP::UserAgent->new( $str );
die "Unable to parse!" if $ua->unknown;
print $ua->name;
print $ua->version;
print $ua->os;
# or just dump for debugging:
print $ua->dumper;
DESCRIPTION¶
This document describes version 0.39 of "Parse::HTTP::UserAgent"
released on "2 December 2013".
Quoting <
http://www.webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/>:
" ... and then Google built Chrome, and Chrome used Webkit, and it was like
Safari, and wanted pages built for Safari, and so pretended to be Safari.
And thus Chrome used WebKit, and pretended to be Safari, and WebKit pretended
to be KHTML, and KHTML pretended to be Gecko, and all browsers pretended to
be Mozilla, (...) , and the user agent string was a complete mess, and near
useless, and everyone pretended to be everyone else, and confusion
abounded."
User agent strings are a complete mess since there is no standard format for
them. They can be in various formats and can include more or less information
depending on the vendor's (or the user's) choice. Also, it is not dependable
since it is some arbitrary identification string. Any user agent can fake
another. So, why deal with such a useless mess? You may want to see the choice
of your visitors and can get some reliable data (even if some are fake) and
generate some nice charts out of them or just want to send an
"HttpOnly" cookie if the user agent seems to support it (and send a
normal one if this is not the case). However, browser sniffing for client-side
coding is considered a bad habit.
This module implements a rules-based parser and tries to identify MSIE, FireFox,
Opera, Safari & Chrome first. It then tries to identify Mozilla, Netscape,
Robots and the rest will be tried with a generic parser. There is also a
structure dumper, useful for debugging.
METHODS¶
new STRING [, OPTIONS ]¶
Constructor. Takes the user agent string as the first parameter and returns an
object based on the parsed structure.
The optional "OPTIONS" parameter (must be a hashref) can be used to
pass several parameters:
- •
- "extended": controls if the extended probe will be used or not.
Default is true. Set this to false to disable:
$ua = Parse::HTTP::UserAgent->new( $str, { extended => 0 } );
Can be used to speed up the parser by disabling detection of non-major
browsers, robots and most mobile agents.
trim STRING¶
Trims the string.
as_hash¶
Returns a hash representation of the parsed structure.
dumper¶
See Parse::HTTP::UserAgent::Base::Dumper.
accessors¶
See Parse::HTTP::UserAgent::Base::Accessors for the available accessors you can
use on the parsed object.
OVERLOADED INTERFACE¶
The object returned, overloads stringification ("name") and
numification ("version") operators. So that you can write this:
print 42 if $ua eq 'Opera' && $ua >= 9;
instead of this
print 42 if $ua->name eq 'Opera' && $ua->version >= 9;
ERROR HANDLING¶
- •
- If you pass a false value to the constructor, it'll croak.
- •
- If you pass a non-hashref option to the constructor, it'll croak.
- •
- If you pass a wrong parameter to the dumper, it'll croak.
SEE ALSO¶
Similar Functionality¶
- •
- HTML::ParseBrowser
- •
- HTTP::BrowserDetect
- •
- HTTP::DetectUserAgent
- •
- HTTP::MobileAgent
- •
- Mobile::UserAgent
Resources¶
- •
- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent>
- •
- <http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/browser_ids.htm>
- •
- <http://www.zytrax.com/tech/web/mobile_ids.html>
- •
- <http://www.webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/>
- •
- <https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Gecko_user_agent_string_reference>
- •
- <http://www.useragentstring.com>
Module Reviews¶
- •
- CPAN modules for parsing User-Agent strings by Neil Bowers:
<http://blogs.perl.org/users/neilb/2011/10/cpan-modules-for-parsing-user-agent-strings.html>
(23 October 2011).
- •
- Parse::HTTP::UserAgent: yet another user agent string parser by Burak
Gursoy: <http://use.perl.org/~Burak/journal/39577> (4 September
2009).
AUTHOR¶
Burak Gursoy <burak@cpan.org>.
COPYRIGHT¶
Copyright 2009 - 2013 Burak Gursoy. All rights reserved.
LICENSE¶
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.16.2 or, at your option,
any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.