PHP get_browser() Function

The PHP get_browser() function attempts to determine the capabilities of the user's browser, by looking up the browser's information in the browscap.ini file.

Syntax

get_browser(user_agent, return_array)

Parameters

Return Value

Returns the information in an object or an array which will contain various data elements representing, for example - the browser's major and minor version numbers and ID string, true/false values for features such as frames, JavaScript, and cookies etc.

The cookies value simply means that the browser itself is capable of accepting cookies and does not mean the user has enabled the browser to accept cookies or not. The only way to test if cookies are accepted is to set one with setcookie(), reload, and check for the value.

Returns false when no information can be retrieved, such as when the browscap configuration setting in php.ini has not been set.

Example: get_browser() example

The example below shows the usage of get_browser() function.

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

//using get_browser() to display 
//capabilities of the user browser
$browser = get_browser(null, true);
print_r($browser);
?>

The output of the above code will be similar to:

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] =>
)