get_browser

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7)

get_browser — 获取浏览器具有的功能

说明

get_browser ([ string $user_agent [, bool $return_array = false ]] ) : mixed

通过查找 browscap.ini 文件中的浏览器信息，尝试检测用户的浏览器所具有的功能。

参数

user_agent

要分析的用户代理。默认使用HTTP头中User-Agent的值，不过，你可以通过传递该参数改变User-Agent。(比如查找另一个浏览器的信息)

你可以传递一个 NULL 来忽略该参数。

return_array

如果设置为 TRUE，该函数会返回一个 array，而不是 object。

返回值

信息会以包含一系列数据的数组或者对象返回。例如：浏览器的主版本号、次版本号和ID字符串；框架、JavaScript、cookies等功能是否支持 TRUE/FALSE 的值。

cookies 的值仅意味着浏览器是否具有接收cookies的功能，不代表用户是否已允许启用cookies。 测试的唯一办法，只有通过 setcookie() 设置一个cookie，刷新页面并检测该cookie的值。

范例

Example #1 列出所有用户浏览器的信息

<?php
echo $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] . "\n\n";

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

以上例程的输出类似于：

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3

Array
(
    [browser_name_regex] => ^mozilla/5\.0 (windows; .; windows nt 5\.1; .*rv:.*) gecko/.* firefox/0\.9.*$
    [browser_name_pattern] => Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; ?; Windows NT 5.1; *rv:*) Gecko/* Firefox/0.9*
    [parent] => Firefox 0.9
    [platform] => WinXP
    [browser] => Firefox
    [version] => 0.9
    [majorver] => 0
    [minorver] => 9
    [cssversion] => 2
    [frames] => 1
    [iframes] => 1
    [tables] => 1
    [cookies] => 1
    [backgroundsounds] =>
    [vbscript] =>
    [javascript] => 1
    [javaapplets] => 1
    [activexcontrols] =>
    [cdf] =>
    [aol] =>
    [beta] => 1
    [win16] =>
    [crawler] =>
    [stripper] =>
    [wap] =>
    [netclr] =>
)

注释

Note:

为了能让该函数运作，在 php.ini 中配置的 browscap 必须指向 browscap.ini 文件的正确位置。

browscap.ini 并未内置在PHP中，不过你可以在这里找到最新的 » php_browscap.ini。

browscap.ini 包含的诸多浏览器信息依赖于用户更新该数据库。该文件的格式不言自明。

User Contributed Notes

Anonymous 28-Dec-2018 12:45
Follow up to Francesco R's post from 2016.

His function works for most human traffic; added a few lines to cover the most common bot traffic. Also fixed issue with function failing to detect strings at position 0 due to strpos behavior.

<?php
// Function written and tested December, 2018
function get_browser_name($user_agent)
{
        // Make case insensitive.
        $t = strtolower($user_agent);

        // If the string *starts* with the string, strpos returns 0 (i.e., FALSE). Do a ghetto hack and start with a space.
        // "[strpos()] may return Boolean FALSE, but may also return a non-Boolean value which evaluates to FALSE."
        //     http://php.net/manual/en/function.strpos.php
        $t = " " . $t;

        // Humans / Regular Users     
        if     (strpos($t, 'opera'     ) || strpos($t, 'opr/')     ) return 'Opera'            ;
        elseif (strpos($t, 'edge'      )                           ) return 'Edge'             ;
        elseif (strpos($t, 'chrome'    )                           ) return 'Chrome'           ;
        elseif (strpos($t, 'safari'    )                           ) return 'Safari'           ;
        elseif (strpos($t, 'firefox'   )                           ) return 'Firefox'          ;
        elseif (strpos($t, 'msie'      ) || strpos($t, 'trident/7')) return 'Internet Explorer';

        // Search Engines 
        elseif (strpos($t, 'google'    )                           ) return '[Bot] Googlebot'   ;
        elseif (strpos($t, 'bing'      )                           ) return '[Bot] Bingbot'     ;
        elseif (strpos($t, 'slurp'     )                           ) return '[Bot] Yahoo! Slurp';
        elseif (strpos($t, 'duckduckgo')                           ) return '[Bot] DuckDuckBot' ;
        elseif (strpos($t, 'baidu'     )                           ) return '[Bot] Baidu'       ;
        elseif (strpos($t, 'yandex'    )                           ) return '[Bot] Yandex'      ;
        elseif (strpos($t, 'sogou'     )                           ) return '[Bot] Sogou'       ;
        elseif (strpos($t, 'exabot'    )                           ) return '[Bot] Exabot'      ;
        elseif (strpos($t, 'msn'       )                           ) return '[Bot] MSN'         ;

        // Common Tools and Bots
        elseif (strpos($t, 'mj12bot'   )                           ) return '[Bot] Majestic'     ;
        elseif (strpos($t, 'ahrefs'    )                           ) return '[Bot] Ahrefs'       ;
        elseif (strpos($t, 'semrush'   )                           ) return '[Bot] SEMRush'      ;
        elseif (strpos($t, 'rogerbot'  ) || strpos($t, 'dotbot')   ) return '[Bot] Moz or OpenSiteExplorer';
        elseif (strpos($t, 'frog'      ) || strpos($t, 'screaming')) return '[Bot] Screaming Frog';
       
        // Miscellaneous
        elseif (strpos($t, 'facebook'  )                           ) return '[Bot] Facebook'     ;
        elseif (strpos($t, 'pinterest' )                           ) return '[Bot] Pinterest'    ;
       
        // Check for strings commonly used in bot user agents  
        elseif (strpos($t, 'crawler' ) || strpos($t, 'api'    ) ||
                strpos($t, 'spider'  ) || strpos($t, 'http'   ) ||
                strpos($t, 'bot'     ) || strpos($t, 'archive') ||
                strpos($t, 'info'    ) || strpos($t, 'data'   )    ) return '[Bot] Other'   ;
       
        return 'Other (Unknown)';
}
?>
Post with more depth here:
https://www.256kilobytes.com/content/show/1922/how-to-parse-a-user-agent-in-php-with-minimal-effort
Jeff Williams 26-Apr-2018 06:33
To automatically update your browscap.ini file on linux servers, you can use this simple shell script:

wget -O /etc/browscap.ini "http://browscap.org/stream?q=Full_PHP_BrowsCapINI"
chmod 664 /etc/browscap.ini

You can put it in the weekly cron job folder usually located in /etc/cron.weekly just don't forget to make the script executable (chmod 775 scriptname).
Konstantin Rozinov 26-Dec-2017 05:18
Since browser detection can be tricky and very slow, I compared a few packages.

http://thadafinser.github.io/UserAgentParserComparison/v5/index.html

https://github.com/sinergi/php-browser-detector
https://github.com/WhichBrowser/Parser-PHP
https://github.com/piwik/device-detector
http://php.net/manual/en/function.get-browser.php

Here are the results:

User Agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/63.0.3239.84 Safari/537.36

Sinergi Package
---------------
Chrome 63.0.3239.84 on Windows 10.0
Took 0.0022480487823486 seconds.
---------------

WhichBrowser Package
---------------
Chrome 63 on Windows 10
Took 0.021045207977295 seconds.
---------------

Piwik Package
---------------
Chrome 63.0 on Windows 10
Took 0.079447031021118 seconds.
---------------

get_browser Package
---------------
Chrome 63.0 on Windows 10
Took 0.09611701965332 seconds.
---------------

User Agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0

Sinergi Package
---------------
Firefox 57.0 on Windows 10.0
Took 0.0023159980773926 seconds.
---------------

WhichBrowser Package
---------------
Firefox 57.0 on Windows 10
Took 0.019663095474243 seconds.
---------------

Piwik Package
---------------
Firefox 57.0 on Windows 10
Took 0.079678058624268 seconds.
---------------

get_browser Package
---------------
Firefox 57.0 on Windows 10
Took 0.02236008644104 seconds.
---------------

The consistent winner (by speed, not necessarily coverage) by far is:
https://github.com/sinergi/php-browser-detector
krozinov at gmail dot com 26-Dec-2017 04:19
As of PHP 7.0.15 and 7.1.1 and higher, get_browser() now performs much better - reportedly 100x faster.  The Changelog, bug description, and solution are here:

http://php.net/ChangeLog-7.php (search for get_browser())
https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=70490
https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/2242
The Digital Orchard 20-Jan-2017 09:39
Good news! The latest version of PHP has a performance fix for this function. It's reportedly now 100x faster. See the ChangeLog for specifics.
zed 07-Sep-2016 10:20
To complete Francesco R, I added the version of the navigator :

function getNavigateur($user_agent)
    {

        if(empty($user_agent)) {
            return array('nav' => 'NC', 'name' => 'NC', 'version' => 'NC');
        }

        $content_nav['name'] = 'Unknown';

        if (strpos($user_agent, 'Opera') || strpos($user_agent, 'OPR/')) {

            $content_nav['name'] = 'Opera';

            if (strpos($user_agent, 'OPR/')) {
                $content_nav['reel_name'] = 'OPR/';
            } else {
                $content_nav['reel_name'] = 'Opera';
            }

        }
        elseif (strpos($user_agent, 'Edge')) {
            $content_nav['name'] = $content_nav['reel_name'] = 'Edge';
        }
        elseif (strpos($user_agent, 'Chrome')) $content_nav['name'] = $content_nav['reel_name'] = 'Chrome';
        elseif (strpos($user_agent, 'Safari')) $content_nav['name'] = $content_nav['reel_name'] = 'Safari';
        elseif (strpos($user_agent, 'Firefox')) $content_nav['name'] = $content_nav['reel_name'] = 'Firefox';
        elseif (strpos($user_agent, 'MSIE') || strpos($user_agent, 'Trident/7') || strpos($user_agent, 'Trident/7.0; rv:')) {
            $content_nav['name'] = 'Internet Explorer';

            if (strpos($user_agent, 'Trident/7.0; rv:')) {
                $content_nav['reel_name'] = 'Trident/7.0; rv:';
            } elseif (strpos($user_agent, 'Trident/7')) {
                $content_nav['reel_name'] = 'Trident/7';
            } else {
                $content_nav['reel_name'] = 'Opera';
            }

        }

        $pattern = '#' . $content_nav['reel_name'] . '\/*([0-9\.]*)#';

        $matches = array();

        if(preg_match($pattern, $user_agent, $matches)) {

            $content_nav['version'] = $matches[1];
            return $content_nav;

        }

        return array('name' => $content_nav['name'], 'version' => 'Inconnu');
    }
Francesco R 14-May-2016 01:52
If you ONLY need a very fast and simple function to detect the browser name (update to May 2016):

<?php

function get_browser_name($user_agent)
{
    if (strpos($user_agent, 'Opera') || strpos($user_agent, 'OPR/')) return 'Opera';
    elseif (strpos($user_agent, 'Edge')) return 'Edge';
    elseif (strpos($user_agent, 'Chrome')) return 'Chrome';
    elseif (strpos($user_agent, 'Safari')) return 'Safari';
    elseif (strpos($user_agent, 'Firefox')) return 'Firefox';
    elseif (strpos($user_agent, 'MSIE') || strpos($user_agent, 'Trident/7')) return 'Internet Explorer';
   
    return 'Other';
}

// Usage:

echo get_browser_name($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);

?>

This function also resolves the trouble with Edge (that contains in the user agent the string "Safari" and "Chrome"), with Chrome (contains the string "Safari") and IE11 (that do not contains 'MSIE' like all other IE versions).

Note that "strpos" is the fastest function to check a string (far better than "preg_match") and Opera + Edge + Chrome + Safari + Firefox + Internet Explorer are the most used browsers today (over 97%).
Anonymous 12-Jan-2016 02:37
This function is too slow for todays needs.

If you need browser / device / operating system detection, please try one of listed packages here: https://github.com/ThaDafinser/UserAgentParser
p2 at eduardoruiz dot es 12-Jan-2016 12:58
BE CAREFUL WITH THIS FUNCTION!!
This function uses a lot of CPU and RAM on the whole server resources.
Perhaps if you use this function a few times then no problem, but NOT if you use at any page request, or once per session.

Also, this function doesn't work correctly and may returns wrong values, wildcards or empty, so it's not very useful for web statistics.

The best way is to use preg_match for detect browser/platform.
jeremie dot legrand at komori-chambon dot fr 16-Dec-2015 04:28
Be careful if you use the "Full" Browscap INI file in your php.ini config: I wondered why each Apache thread took 350MB RAM on my server until I changed the "Full" version by the "Lite" one (45MB to 0.7MB)

Now, each thread takes only 16MB...
So if it is enough for you, use the Lite version!
shashank 17-Jun-2015 06:17
As ruudrp had given the code http://php.net/manual/en/function.get-browser.php#101125, I have added code for Internet Explorer 11

<?php
function getBrowser()
{
    $u_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
    $bname = 'Unknown';
    $platform = 'Unknown';
    $version= "";

    //First get the platform?
    if (preg_match('/linux/i', $u_agent)) {
        $platform = 'linux';
    }
    elseif (preg_match('/macintosh|mac os x/i', $u_agent)) {
        $platform = 'mac';
    }
    elseif (preg_match('/windows|win32/i', $u_agent)) {
        $platform = 'windows';
    }

    // Next get the name of the useragent yes seperately and for good reason
    if(preg_match('/MSIE/i',$u_agent) && !preg_match('/Opera/i',$u_agent))
    {
        $bname = 'Internet Explorer';
        $ub = "MSIE";
    }
    elseif(preg_match('/Trident/i',$u_agent))
    { // this condition is for IE11
        $bname = 'Internet Explorer';
        $ub = "rv";
    }
    elseif(preg_match('/Firefox/i',$u_agent))
    {
        $bname = 'Mozilla Firefox';
        $ub = "Firefox";
    }
    elseif(preg_match('/Chrome/i',$u_agent))
    {
        $bname = 'Google Chrome';
        $ub = "Chrome";
    }
    elseif(preg_match('/Safari/i',$u_agent))
    {
        $bname = 'Apple Safari';
        $ub = "Safari";
    }
    elseif(preg_match('/Opera/i',$u_agent))
    {
        $bname = 'Opera';
        $ub = "Opera";
    }
    elseif(preg_match('/Netscape/i',$u_agent))
    {
        $bname = 'Netscape';
        $ub = "Netscape";
    }
   
    // finally get the correct version number
    // Added "|:"
    $known = array('Version', $ub, 'other');
    $pattern = '#(?<browser>' . join('|', $known) .
     ')[/|: ]+(?<version>[0-9.|a-zA-Z.]*)#';
    if (!preg_match_all($pattern, $u_agent, $matches)) {
        // we have no matching number just continue
    }

    // see how many we have
    $i = count($matches['browser']);
    if ($i != 1) {
        //we will have two since we are not using 'other' argument yet
        //see if version is before or after the name
        if (strripos($u_agent,"Version") < strripos($u_agent,$ub)){
            $version= $matches['version'][0];
        }
        else {
            $version= $matches['version'][1];
        }
    }
    else {
        $version= $matches['version'][0];
    }

    // check if we have a number
    if ($version==null || $version=="") {$version="?";}

    return array(
        'userAgent' => $u_agent,
        'name'      => $bname,
        'version'   => $version,
        'platform'  => $platform,
        'pattern'    => $pattern
    );
}

// now try it
$ua=getBrowser();
$yourbrowser= "Your browser: " . $ua['name'] . " " . $ua['version'] . " on " .$ua['platform'] . " reports: <br >" . $ua['userAgent'];
print_r($yourbrowser);
?>
Billscott 21-Oct-2014 12:36
After a great deal of research in to how to detect a users browser using php.I found out that the following code below works  best so i feel like sharing.
<?php
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];

if (preg_match('/safari/i', $user_agent)) {
   echo "safari";
   }else if (preg_match('/Mozilla/i', $user_agent)) {
   echo "Mozilla";
   }else if (preg_match('/chrome/i', $user_agent)) {
   echo "chrome";
   }else{
echo "You are not using any of the major browsers";
}
?>
tim at digicol dot de 22-May-2014 01:01
Be aware that loading php_browscap.ini via the browscap php.ini setting may consume a non-trivial amount of memory. Current versions are several MB in size (even the "lite" one) and can eat tens of MB of RAM in each PHP process. This happens even if you never call get_browser() since php_browscap.ini is loaded when PHP is starting up.

Make sure to leave the browscap php.ini setting empty if you don't use get_browser() - maybe you only call it only from PHP Web pages, but not from PHP CLI code.

I'd recommend comparing your processes' memory consumption with and without php_browscap.ini being loaded. If necesseray, consider creating your own stripped-down copy of php_browscap.ini with just the browsers that are important to you.
haci at muratyaman dot co dot uk 21-May-2014 09:52
I've just lost a day because of this stupid browser_name_regex property:

e.g. "§^mozilla/5\.0 \(.*windows nt 6\.1.*wow64.*\) gecko/.* firefox/29\.0.*$§"

To replicate the issue and work around bloody '§' character, please below. Whose idea was it to use that character?!

<?php
$ua = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
echo '$_SERVER[\'HTTP_USER_AGENT\'] => "' . $ua . '"<br />';

$browser = get_browser($ua);
echo 'get_browser($ua) => <pre>';
var_dump($browser);
echo '</pre><br />';

$json = json_encode($browser, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);
echo 'json_encode($browser) => <pre>';
echo $json;
echo '</pre><br />';

echo 'json_last_error() => "' . json_last_error() . '"<br />';

//echo 'unsetting $browser->browser_name_regex <br />';
//unset($browser->browser_name_regex);
//or
echo '$browser->browser_name_regex = utf8_encode($browser->browser_name_regex);<br />';
$browser->browser_name_regex = utf8_encode($browser->browser_name_regex);

$json = json_encode($browser, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);
echo 'json_encode($browser) => <pre>';
echo $json;
echo '</pre><br />';

echo 'json_last_error() => "' . json_last_error() . '"<br />';
?>
ibi at tlr dot de 15-May-2014 03:17
@ruudrp:
you might want to distinguish the OS even further:
(at least for windows that is)

    elseif (preg_match('/windows|win32/i', $u_agent)) {
        $platform = 'Windows';
        if (preg_match('/NT 6.2/i', $u_agent)) { $platform .= ' 8'; }
            elseif (preg_match('/NT 6.3/i', $u_agent)) { $platform .= ' 8.1'; }
            elseif (preg_match('/NT 6.1/i', $u_agent)) { $platform .= ' 7'; }
            elseif (preg_match('/NT 6.0/i', $u_agent)) { $platform .= ' Vista'; }
            elseif (preg_match('/NT 5.1/i', $u_agent)) { $platform .= ' XP'; }
            elseif (preg_match('/NT 5.0/i', $u_agent)) { $platform .= ' 2000'; }
        if (preg_match('/WOW64/i', $u_agent) || preg_match('/x64/i', $u_agent)) { $platform .= ' (x64)'; }
    }
cbonfrate at gmail dot com 01-Feb-2014 04:35
You could add this to the ruudrp's code, to recognize MSIE 11

if(preg_match('/Trident/i', $u_agent) && !preg_match('/Opera/i',$u_agent))
    {
        $bname = 'Internet Explorer';
        $ub = "Trident";
    }
Anonymous 10-Dec-2013 06:53
Warning!
For All Users there is a new website about new
"Browser Capabilities Project"
browscap.org

look here : goo.gl/gOPxHp
this is a question about one of the problems have been fixed in the new version.

?????!
??? ?????????? ??? ???? ???? ???? ?? ????? ????? ???????
"Browser Capabilities Project"
browscap.org

???? ??? : goo.gl/gOPxHp
??? ?? ???? ?? ??? ??????? ???? ?? ???????? ?? ??????? ??????
wind_born at yahoo dot com 24-Oct-2013 07:07
Your system may have problems parsing browscap.ini if the value fields are not quoted (see bishop's note). This is often true even for the PHP specific version of the published browscap.ini. The sed command below adds quotations to the values:

sed '/^[a-zA-Z0-9].*=[a-zA-Z0-9]/s/=\(.*\)/="\1"/' $inFile > $fixedFile

If you're using a script to fetch the latest browscap.ini, consider adding this operation to the script.
meduza 27-Dec-2011 01:48
I stopped trying to detect the browser name and the browser's version, due to the non standard user-agents, is impossible to cover all the possible browsers, and cover only the most used ones is not good.
I only detect the platform, the engine and the version, that cover a lot of possible browsers and let me code based on that, for example, the engine gecko, covers firefox, seamonkey and all the gecko based browsers.

this is a example piece of code taken from my own, is maybe incomplete but as example is good, to detect the engines.

<?php
/****** browser engine detection **************/
//browsers
define("UNKNOWN", 0);
define("TRIDENT", 1);
define("GECKO", 2);
define("PRESTO", 3);
define("WEBKIT", 4);
define("VALIDATOR", 5);
define("ROBOTS", 6);

if(!isset($_SESSION["info"]['browser'])) {
    $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['engine'] = UNKNOWN;
    $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['version'] = UNKNOWN;
    $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['platform'] = 'Unknown';

    $navigator_user_agent = ' ' . strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);

    if (strpos($navigator_user_agent, 'linux')) :
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['platform'] = 'Linux';
    elseif (strpos($navigator_user_agent, 'mac')) :
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['platform'] = 'Mac';
    elseif (strpos($navigator_user_agent, 'win')) :
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['platform'] = 'Windows';
    endif;

    if (strpos($navigator_user_agent, "trident")) {
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['engine'] = TRIDENT;
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['version'] = floatval(substr($navigator_user_agent, strpos($navigator_user_agent, "trident/") + 8, 3));
    }
    elseif (strpos($navigator_user_agent, "webkit")) {
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['engine'] = WEBKIT;
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['version'] = floatval(substr($navigator_user_agent, strpos($navigator_user_agent, "webkit/") + 7, 8));
    }
        elseif (strpos($navigator_user_agent, "presto")) {
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['engine'] = PRESTO;
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['version'] = floatval(substr($navigator_user_agent, strpos($navigator_user_agent, "presto/") + 6, 7));
    }
    elseif (strpos($navigator_user_agent, "gecko")) {
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['engine'] = GECKO;
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['version'] = floatval(substr($navigator_user_agent, strpos($navigator_user_agent, "gecko/") + 6, 9));
    }
    elseif (strpos($navigator_user_agent, "robot"))
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['engine'] = ROBOTS;
    elseif (strpos($navigator_user_agent, "spider"))
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['engine'] = ROBOTS;
    elseif (strpos($navigator_user_agent, "bot"))
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['engine'] = ROBOTS;
    elseif (strpos($navigator_user_agent, "crawl"))
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['engine'] = ROBOTS;
    elseif (strpos($navigator_user_agent, "search"))
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['engine'] = ROBOTS;
    elseif (strpos($navigator_user_agent, "w3c_validator"))
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['engine'] = VALIDATOR;
    elseif (strpos($navigator_user_agent, "jigsaw"))
        $_SESSION["info"]['browser']['engine'] = VALIDATOR;

echo "<pre>\n\nEngine detected: ".$_SESSION["info"]['browser']['engine'];
switch($_SESSION["info"]['browser']['engine']) {
    case UNKNOWN: echo " (unknown)";
    break;
    case TRIDENT: echo " (trident)";
    break;
    case GECKO: echo " (gecko)";
    break;
    case PRESTO: echo " (presto)";
    break;
    case WEBKIT: echo " (Webkit)";
    break;
    case VALIDATOR: echo " (validator)";
    break;
    case ROBOTS: echo " (robot)";
}
echo "\nEngine version: ".$_SESSION["info"]['browser']['version'];
echo "\nPlataform detected: ".$_SESSION["info"]['browser']['platform'];
echo " \n\n</pre>";
?>

PD: you can add more engines and use an array, I just removed that and put the most popular engines as example, and used elseif instead, this code maybe have errors because is just an example.
Anonymous 11-Jul-2011 06:52
For those of you using this function to target MSIE, a better idea maybe to use MSIE specific conditional comments. More info: <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms537512%28VS.85%29.aspx>.

For example to indicate your disregard for users of MSIE 6 or earlier:

<!--[if lt IE 7]>It appears that you are using a <em>very</em> old version of MS Internet Explorer (MSIE). If you seriously want to continue to use MSIE, at least <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/">upgrade</a>.<![endif]-->
Simeon 09-Dec-2010 05:27
This code is for placing a box in the corner of IE user's page warning of the disregard the web-designer has for the website's appearance in IE.  Call the box with ie_box(). Style and position the box how you want using the iebox css class.

<?php
function using_ie()
{
    $u_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
    $ub = False;
    if(preg_match('/MSIE/i',$u_agent))
    {
        $ub = True;
    }
   
    return $ub;
}

function ie_box() {
    if (using_ie()) {
        ?>
        <div class="iebox">
            This page is not designed for Intenet Explorer.  If you want to see this webpage as intended, please use a standards compliant browser, such as <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome">Google Chrome</a>.
        </div>
        <?php
    return;
    }
}
?>
ruudrp at live dot nl 28-Nov-2010 03:31
To my surprise I found that none of the get_browser alternatives output the correct name / version combination that I was looking for using Opera or Chrome. They either give the wrong name eg Safari when in fact it should be Chrome and if the ua string includes a version number as with the latest versions of Chrome and Opera the wrong number is reported. So I took bits and pieces from the various examples and combined them and added a check for version.

<?php
function getBrowser()
{
    $u_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
    $bname = 'Unknown';
    $platform = 'Unknown';
    $version= "";

    //First get the platform?
    if (preg_match('/linux/i', $u_agent)) {
        $platform = 'linux';
    }
    elseif (preg_match('/macintosh|mac os x/i', $u_agent)) {
        $platform = 'mac';
    }
    elseif (preg_match('/windows|win32/i', $u_agent)) {
        $platform = 'windows';
    }
   
    // Next get the name of the useragent yes seperately and for good reason
    if(preg_match('/MSIE/i',$u_agent) && !preg_match('/Opera/i',$u_agent))
    {
        $bname = 'Internet Explorer';
        $ub = "MSIE";
    }
    elseif(preg_match('/Firefox/i',$u_agent))
    {
        $bname = 'Mozilla Firefox';
        $ub = "Firefox";
    }
    elseif(preg_match('/Chrome/i',$u_agent))
    {
        $bname = 'Google Chrome';
        $ub = "Chrome";
    }
    elseif(preg_match('/Safari/i',$u_agent))
    {
        $bname = 'Apple Safari';
        $ub = "Safari";
    }
    elseif(preg_match('/Opera/i',$u_agent))
    {
        $bname = 'Opera';
        $ub = "Opera";
    }
    elseif(preg_match('/Netscape/i',$u_agent))
    {
        $bname = 'Netscape';
        $ub = "Netscape";
    }
   
    // finally get the correct version number
    $known = array('Version', $ub, 'other');
    $pattern = '#(?<browser>' . join('|', $known) .
    ')[/ ]+(?<version>[0-9.|a-zA-Z.]*)#';
    if (!preg_match_all($pattern, $u_agent, $matches)) {
        // we have no matching number just continue
    }
   
    // see how many we have
    $i = count($matches['browser']);
    if ($i != 1) {
        //we will have two since we are not using 'other' argument yet
        //see if version is before or after the name
        if (strripos($u_agent,"Version") < strripos($u_agent,$ub)){
            $version= $matches['version'][0];
        }
        else {
            $version= $matches['version'][1];
        }
    }
    else {
        $version= $matches['version'][0];
    }
   
    // check if we have a number
    if ($version==null || $version=="") {$version="?";}
   
    return array(
        'userAgent' => $u_agent,
        'name'      => $bname,
        'version'   => $version,
        'platform'  => $platform,
        'pattern'    => $pattern
    );
}

// now try it
$ua=getBrowser();
$yourbrowser= "Your browser: " . $ua['name'] . " " . $ua['version'] . " on " .$ua['platform'] . " reports: <br >" . $ua['userAgent'];
print_r($yourbrowser);
?>
henda dot exe at gmail dot com 15-Aug-2010 09:27
Just a warning to anybody using the preg_match function to determine what browser the viewer is using. I found with google chrome the array contains the following entries;
(Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/5.0.375.126 Safari/533.4

As I was using preg_match('/Chrome/i',$u_agent)) and preg_match('/Safari/i',$u_agent)) i found my script was reporting browsers as safari when infact the browser in use was google chrome.
Becheru Petru-Ioan 04-Apr-2010 03:39
IE has a nasty bug called the Peekaboo bug that affected my website. I found that printing a '_' before the html tag of the webpage gets rid of this nasty bug. Using code inspirated by comment bellow here is the  code that detects if a visitor is using internet explorer:

<?php
$known = array('msie', 'firefox', 'safari', 'webkit', 'opera', 'netscape', 'konqueror', 'gecko');
preg_match_all( '#(?<browser>' . join('|', $known) .
    ')[/ ]+(?<version>[0-9]+(?:\.[0-9]+)?)#', strtolower( $_SERVER[ 'HTTP_USER_AGENT ' ]), $browser );
if($browser['browser'][0]=='msie') print('_');
?>
Brinley Ang 02-Apr-2010 07:38
This is the latest format of the array returned from this call

Array
{
    [browser_name_regex] => ^mozilla/5\.0 (x11; .*; .*linux.*; .*; rv:1\.9\..*) gecko/.* firefox/3\.5.*$
    [browser_name_pattern] => Mozilla/5.0 (X11; *; *Linux*; *; rv:1.9.*) Gecko/* Firefox/3.5*
    [parent] => Firefox 3.5
    [platform] => Linux
    [browser] => Firefox
    [version] => 3.5
    [majorver] => 3
    [minorver] => 5
    [frames] => 1
    [iframes] => 1
    [tables] => 1
    [cookies] => 1
    [javaapplets] => 1
    [javascript] => 1
    [cssversion] => 3
    [supportscss] => 1
    [alpha] =>
    [beta] =>
    [win16] =>
    [win32] =>
    [win64] =>
    [backgroundsounds] =>
    [cdf] =>
    [vbscript] =>
    [activexcontrols] =>
    [isbanned] =>
    [ismobiledevice] =>
    [issyndicationreader] =>
    [crawler] =>
    [aol] =>
    [aolversion] => 0
}
robert at broofa dot com 18-Jul-2009 01:33
If you're just finding this API, note that you may want to use a lighter-weight
browser detection script.  get_browser() requires the "browscap.ini" file,
which is 300KB+.  Loading and processing this file will likely impact script
performance.  Although it surely provides excellent detection results, in most
cases a much simpler method can be just as effective.  This is why so many
previous commenters have provided alternate implementations.

Here's the solution I ended up using, which I've tested on the agents listed at
http://whatsmyuseragent.com/CommonUserAgents.asp It has the advantage of being
compact and reasonably easy to extend (just add entries to the $known array
defined at the top).  It should be fairly performant as well, since it doesn't
do any iteratoin or recursion.

<?php
function browser_info($agent=null) {
  // Declare known browsers to look for
  $known = array('msie', 'firefox', 'safari', 'webkit', 'opera', 'netscape',
    'konqueror', 'gecko');

  // Clean up agent and build regex that matches phrases for known browsers
  // (e.g. "Firefox/2.0" or "MSIE 6.0" (This only matches the major and minor
  // version numbers.  E.g. "2.0.0.6" is parsed as simply "2.0"
  $agent = strtolower($agent ? $agent : $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
  $pattern = '#(?<browser>' . join('|', $known) .
    ')[/ ]+(?<version>[0-9]+(?:\.[0-9]+)?)#';

  // Find all phrases (or return empty array if none found)
  if (!preg_match_all($pattern, $agent, $matches)) return array();

  // Since some UAs have more than one phrase (e.g Firefox has a Gecko phrase,
  // Opera 7,8 have a MSIE phrase), use the last one found (the right-most one
  // in the UA).  That's usually the most correct.
  $i = count($matches['browser'])-1;
  return array($matches['browser'][$i] => $matches['version'][$i]);
}
?>
This returns an array with the detected browser as the key, and the version as
the value, and also sets 'browser' and 'version' keys.  For example on Firefox
3.5:
<?php
$ua = browser_info();
print_r($ua);
/* Yields ...
Array
(
    [firefox] => 3.5
    [browser] => firefox
    [version] => 3.5
)
*/

// Various browser tests you can do with the returned array ...
if ($ua['firefox']) ... // true
if ($ua['firefox'] > 3) ... // true
if ($ua['firefox'] > 4) ... // false
if ($ua['browser'] == 'firefox') ... // true
if ($ua['version'] > 3.5) ... // true
if ($ua['msie']) ... // false ('msie' key not defined)
if ($ua['opera'] > 3) ... // false ('opera' key not defined)
if ($ua['safari'] < 3) ... // false also ('safari' key not defined)
?>
Steve Perkins 21-Jun-2009 04:11
This is a simple class to detect the client browser and version using regular expressions.

<?PHP
class Browser
{
    private $props    = array("Version" => "0.0.0",
                                "Name" => "unknown",
                                "Agent" => "unknown") ;

    public function __Construct()
    {
        $browsers = array("firefox", "msie", "opera", "chrome", "safari",
                            "mozilla", "seamonkey",    "konqueror", "netscape",
                            "gecko", "navigator", "mosaic", "lynx", "amaya",
                            "omniweb", "avant", "camino", "flock", "aol");

        $this->Agent = strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
        foreach($browsers as $browser)
        {
            if (preg_match("#($browser)[/ ]?([0-9.]*)#", $this->Agent, $match))
            {
                $this->Name = $match[1] ;
                $this->Version = $match[2] ;
                break ;
            }
        }
    }

    public function __Get($name)
    {
        if (!array_key_exists($name, $this->props))
        {
            die "No such property or function $name)" ;
        }
        return $this->props[$name] ;
    }

    public function __Set($name, $val)
    {
        if (!array_key_exists($name, $this->props))
        {
            SimpleError("No such property or function.", "Failed to set $name", $this->props) ;
            die ;
        }
        $this->props[$name] = $val ;
    }

}

?>

example code
<?PHP
$browser = new Browser ;
echo "$Browser->Name $Browser->Version" ;
?>
result when client using Firefox 3.0.11
firefox 3.0.11

result when client using unknown browser
unknown 0.0.0
 
etc etc
Steve Perkins 21-Jun-2009 09:42
This is a simple class to detect the client browser and version using regular expressions.

<?PHP
class Browser extends BaseObjects_PropertyArray
{
    private $props    = array("Version" => "0.0.0",
                                "Name" => "unknown",
                                "Agent" => "unknown",
                                "AllowsHeaderRedirect" => true) ;

    public function __Construct()
    {
        $browsers = array("firefox", "msie", "opera", "chrome", "safari",
                            "mozilla", "seamonkey",    "konqueror", "netscape",
                            "gecko", "navigator", "mosaic", "lynx", "amaya",
                            "omniweb", "avant", "camino", "flock", "aol");

        $this->Agent = strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
        foreach($browsers as $browser)
        {
            if (preg_match("#($browser)[/ ]?([0-9.]*)#", $this->Agent, $match))
            {
                $this->Name = $match[1] ;
                $this->Version = $match[2] ;
                break ;
            }
        }
        $this->AllowsHeaderRedirect = !($this->Name == "msie" && $this->Version < 7) ;
    }

    public function __Get($name)
    {
        if (!array_key_exists($name, $this->props))
        {
            die "No such property or function $name)" ;
        }
        return $this->props[$name] ;
    }

}

?>

example code
<?PHP
$browser = new Browser ;
echo "$Browser->Name $Browser->Version" ;
?>
result when client using Firefox 3.0.11
firefox 3.0.11

result when client using unknown browser
unknown 0.0.0
 
etc etc
Mattkun Koder 28-Apr-2009 07:00
If you want to use: ceo /a/ mmg5 /./ com 's improved version and STILL detect Google Chrome you need to move CHROME earlier on the list Before Safari otherwise it will be detected as safari.

    $browser_list = 'msie firefox chrome konqueror safari netscape navigator opera mosaic lynx amaya omniweb avant camino flock seamonkey aol mozilla gecko';
jesdisciple [at] gmail -dawt- com 19-Nov-2007 08:13
Use this to ensure that the costly call in its standard form never needs to be repeated:
<?php
function getBrowser(){
    static $browser;//No accident can arise from depending on an unset variable.
    if(!isset($browser)){
        $browser = get_browser($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
    }
    return $browser;
}
?>
Steffen 19-Oct-2007 03:59
Keep in mind that get_browser(); really slows down your application.  It takes about 22 ms to execute on an idle server with Ubuntu Linux, Apache 2, PHP 5.1.3.
digibrisk at gmail dot NOSPAM dot SPAMNO dot com 06-Oct-2007 05:20
If the "browscap" directive isn't set in your server's php.ini, then an error warning is shown. Just in case, you could make a call to ini_get() to check if the browscap directive is set before using browser_get().

<?php
if(ini_get("browscap")) {
    $browser = get_browse(null, true);
}
?>
mike at mike-griffiths dot co dot uk 23-Jul-2007 02:41
You should not rely on just this for cross-browser compatibility issues.  Good practice would be to include HTML if-statements for IE stylesheets as well as dynamically checking the browser type.
ansar dot ahmed at impelsys dot com 22-Mar-2007 02:01
We are using get_browser() function for useragent Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows NT) the get_browser function is returning as Default Browser and Platform = unknown.

So i added this to my browscap.ini manually:

[Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows NT)]
Parent=IE 4.01
Platform=WinNT
sam 22-Oct-2006 03:09
I thought this function might be useful to those without access to the php.ini file (such as those on a shared hosting system):

<?php
function php_get_browser($agent = NULL){
$agent=$agent?$agent:$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
$yu=array();
$q_s=array("#\.#","#\*#","#\?#");
$q_r=array("\.",".*",".?");
$brows=parse_ini_file("php_browscap.ini",true);
foreach($brows as $k=>$t){
  if(fnmatch($k,$agent)){
  $yu['browser_name_pattern']=$k;
  $pat=preg_replace($q_s,$q_r,$k);
  $yu['browser_name_regex']=strtolower("^$pat$");
    foreach($brows as $g=>$r){
      if($t['Parent']==$g){
        foreach($brows as $a=>$b){
          if($r['Parent']==$a){
            $yu=array_merge($yu,$b,$r,$t);
            foreach($yu as $d=>$z){
              $l=strtolower($d);
              $hu[$l]=$z;
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
    break;
  }
}
return $hu;
}
?>

define the location of php_browscap.ini wherever you want
always returns an array, same functionality as get_browser(NULL,true)
Hope someone finds it useful!
adspeed.com 02-Sep-2005 10:06
Here is what we do to fix the parsing error messages for php_browscap.ini downloaded from Gary's website.

<?php
// fix the browsecap.ini for php
$v= file_get_contents('php_browscap.ini');
$v= preg_replace("/\r/","",$v);
$v= preg_replace('/="(.*)"/i','=\\1',$v);
$v= preg_replace("/platform=(.*)/i","platform=\"\\1\"",$v);
$v= preg_replace("/parent=(.*)/i","parent=\"\\1\"",$v);
$v= preg_replace("/minorver=(.*)/i","minorver=\"\\1\"",$v);
$v= preg_replace("/majorver=(.*)/i","majorver=\"\\1\"",$v);
$v= preg_replace("/version=(.*)/i","version=\"\\1\"",$v);
$v= preg_replace("/browser=(.*)/i","browser=\"\\1\"",$v);
$v= str_replace("[*]","*",$v);
file_put_contents('browscap.ini',$v);
?>
max at phpexpert dot de 26-Mar-2004 07:14
Be aware of the fact that this function shows what a specific browser might be able to show, but NOT what the user has turned on/off.

So maybe this function tells you that the browser is abel to to javascript even when javascript is turned off by the user.
bishop 05-Aug-2003 11:46
PHP is sensitive to characters outside the range [ A-Za-z0-9_] as values in .ini files.  For example

browser=Opera (Bork Version)

causes PHP to complain, as it doesn't like the parentheses.

If you place quotation marks around the values for all keys in the browscap.ini file, you'll save yourself parsing problems.  Do this in eg vi with %s/=\(.*\)/="\1"/g

You could of course use PHP itself to fixup the file.  Exercise left to the reader.
verx at implix dot com 09-Dec-2002 02:57
Please keep in mind that you should somehow (for example in session) cache the required results of get_browser() because it really slows thinks down.

We have experienced that without querying for browser data our scripts would run 120-130% faster. the explanation is that over 200kb long file (browscap.ini) has to be loaded and parsed everytime someone access any page (we need browser results on all pages).

So keep results in session and expect a performance boost.
nick at category4 dot com 12-Jun-2001 04:21
Here's a quick way to test for a Netscape browser.  IE and Konqueror and several others call themselves "Mozilla", but they always qualify it with the word "compatible."

$isns = stristr($HTTP_USER_AGENT, "Mozilla") && (!(stristr($HTTP_USER_AGENT, "compatible")));
triad at df dot lth dot se 30-Jul-2000 04:17
The only way browscap examines the target browser is through the HTTP_USER_AGENT so there is no way you can determine installed plug-ins. The only way to do that is through client-side JavaScripts.