cbschuld/browser.php

Helps detect the user's browser and platform at the PHP level via the user agent

Installation

Via Composer (Recommended)

composer require cbschuld/browser.php

For development only:

composer require --dev cbschuld/browser.php

Direct Download

Download Browser.php and include it in your project:

require_once 'Browser.php';

Usage

Modern Usage (v2.0+, Recommended)

use cbschuld\Browser;

$browser = new Browser();
if ($browser->getBrowser() == Browser::BROWSER_FIREFOX && $browser->compareVersion('10', '>=')) {
    echo 'You have Firefox version 10 or greater';
}

Legacy Usage (Still Supported)

// Works via automatic aliasing - no namespace needed
$browser = new Browser();
if ($browser->getBrowser() == Browser::BROWSER_FIREFOX && $browser->getVersion() >= 10) {
    echo 'You have Firefox version 10 or greater';
}

Version Comparison (PHP 8+ Compatible)

use cbschuld\Browser;

$browser = new Browser();

// Recommended approach for version comparison
if ($browser->compareVersion('15.0', '>=')) {
    echo 'Modern browser detected';
}

// Multiple comparisons
if ($browser->getBrowser() == Browser::BROWSER_CHROME && 
    $browser->compareVersion('90', '>=')) {
    echo 'Modern Chrome detected';
}

Browser Detection

This solution identifies the following Browsers and does a best-guess on the version:

• Opera (Browser::BROWSER_OPERA)
• WebTV (Browser::BROWSER_WEBTV)
• NetPositive (Browser::BROWSER_NETPOSITIVE)
• Edge (Browser::BROWSER_EDGE)
• Internet Explorer (Browser::BROWSER_IE)
• Pocket Internet Explorer (Browser::BROWSER_POCKET_IE)
• Galeon (Browser::BROWSER_GALEON)
• Konqueror (Browser::BROWSER_KONQUEROR)
• iCab (Browser::BROWSER_ICAB)
• OmniWeb (Browser::BROWSER_OMNIWEB)
• Phoenix (Browser::BROWSER_PHOENIX)
• Firebird (Browser::BROWSER_FIREBIRD)
• UCBrowser (Browser::BROWSER_UCBROWSER)
• Firefox (Browser::BROWSER_FIREFOX)
• Mozilla (Browser::BROWSER_MOZILLA)
• Palemoon (Browser::BROWSER_PALEMOON)
• curl (Browser::BROWSER_CURL)
• wget (Browser::BROWSER_WGET)
• Amaya (Browser::BROWSER_AMAYA)
• Lynx (Browser::BROWSER_LYNX)
• Safari (Browser::BROWSER_SAFARI)
• Playstation (Browser::BROWSER_PLAYSTATION)
• iPhone (Browser::BROWSER_IPHONE)
• iPod (Browser::BROWSER_IPOD)
• Google's Android(Browser::BROWSER_ANDROID)
• Google's Chrome(Browser::BROWSER_CHROME)
• GoogleBot(Browser::BROWSER_GOOGLEBOT)
• Yahoo!'s Slurp(Browser::BROWSER_SLURP)
• W3C's Validator(Browser::BROWSER_W3CVALIDATOR)
• BlackBerry(Browser::BROWSER_BLACKBERRY)

Operating System Detection

This solution identifies the following Operating Systems:

• Windows (Browser::PLATFORM_WINDOWS)
• Windows CE (Browser::PLATFORM_WINDOWS_CE)
• Apple (Browser::PLATFORM_APPLE)
• Linux (Browser::PLATFORM_LINUX)
• Android (Browser::PLATFORM_ANDROID)
• OS/2 (Browser::PLATFORM_OS2)
• BeOS (Browser::PLATFORM_BEOS)
• iPhone (Browser::PLATFORM_IPHONE)
• iPod (Browser::PLATFORM_IPOD)
• BlackBerry (Browser::PLATFORM_BLACKBERRY)
• FreeBSD (Browser::PLATFORM_FREEBSD)
• OpenBSD (Browser::PLATFORM_OPENBSD)
• NetBSD (Browser::PLATFORM_NETBSD)
• SunOS (Browser::PLATFORM_SUNOS)
• OpenSolaris (Browser::PLATFORM_OPENSOLARIS)
• iPad (Browser::PLATFORM_IPAD)

History and Legacy

Detecting the user's browser type and version is helpful in web applications that harness some of the newer bleeding edge concepts. With the browser type and version you can notify users about challenges they may experience and suggest they upgrade before using such application. Not a great idea on a large scale public site; but on a private application this type of check can be helpful.

In an active project of mine we have a pretty graphically intensive and visually appealing user interface which leverages a lot of transparent PNG files. Because we all know how great IE6 supports PNG files it was necessary for us to tell our users the lack of power their browser has in a kind way.

Searching for a way to do this at the PHP layer and not at the client layer was more of a challenge than I would have guessed; the only script available was written by Gary White and Gary no longer maintains this script because of reliability. I do agree 100% with Gary about the readability; however, there are realistic reasons to desire the user's browser and browser version and if your visitor is not echoing a false user agent we can take an educated guess.

I based this solution off of Gary White's original work but have since replaced all of his original code. Either way, thank you to Gary. Sadly, I never was able to get in touch with him regarding this solution.

Testing

The testing with PHPUnit against known user agents available in tests/lists. Each file is tab delimited with the following fields:

User Agent, User Agent Type, Browser, Version, Operating System, Operating System Version

eg

Opera/9.80 (X11; Linux i686; Ubuntu/14.10) Presto/2.12.388 Version/12.16	Browser	Opera	12.16	Linux	Linux	
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_2) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/14.0.835.186 Safari/535.1   Browser	Chrome	14.0.835.186	Macintosh	OS X		10_7_2

Tests can be run by phpunit:

vendor/bin/phpunit

Upgrading from v1.x

See UPGRADING.md for detailed migration instructions.

Quick Summary:

• v2.0 requires PHP 8.0+
• Class is now namespaced: cbschuld\Browser
• Backward compatibility maintained via automatic aliasing
• Use compareVersion() for reliable version comparisons