Table of Contents

getBrowser

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

Retrieve the current browser.

Syntax

string getBrowser()

Examples

Example 1

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.)