API	Package	Subpackage	Class	Method	Reference	Last reviewed	Doc status
Home	Joomla.Framework	Environment	JBrowser	getBrowser	getBrowser()	Never	Work in Progress

Retrieve the current browser.

string getBrowser()

jimport('joomla.environment.browser');
$browser =& JBrowser::getInstance();
$name    = $browser->getBrowser();

switch ($name) {
  case 'konqueror':
    echo 'This browser is based on WebKit: ';
    break;
  case 'mozilla':
    echo 'This browser is based on Gecko: ';
    break;
  case 'msie':
    echo '- Good luck with Trident/Tasman: ';
    break;
  case 'opera':
    echo 'This browser is based on Presto: ';
    break;
  default:
    echo 'This is a Handheld, mobile phone, or text based browser: ' . ucwords($name);
}
echo PHP_EOL, $browser->getAgentString();

This may produce (using Firefox 2.0.0.5 on WinXP):

This browser is based on Gecko: 
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5

getBrowser() currently returns the following browser “names”. - opera, msie, konqueror*), mozilla - avantgo, blackberry, ericsson, fresco, hotjava, imode, links, lynx, mml, motorola, nokia, palm, palmscape, wap, xiino

The Safari web browser is reported as ‘konqueror’ since they both share the same HTML rendering engine.

Keep in mind that any kind of server-side client-sniffing is error prone, as the /assumptions/ made of the current browser are exclusively based on the User-Agent string which is not reliable.

If you use this information to serve specific javascript files, you should still implement some client-side object detection to prevent your scripts from failing (users who fake the User-Agent string of their browser should expect such things to happen.)