This add-on is operated by Expedited Security

Boost User Agent identification with our always up to date UA parsing

Last updated July 28, 2023

User Agent Identifier is an add-on to simplify User Agent Identification with our continuously updated user agent parsing library.

As automated bots, mobile devices and desktop browsers have exploded into a thousand different forms, it is really difficult to accurately determine just what a given user-agent represents and even more difficult to aggregate that raw information.

We do the heavy lifting for you by maintaining an always up to date database containing the latest user-agents and bot signatures. Additionally, the service collates that into easily accessible high level categories:

• is_mobile
• is_ios
• is_android
• os_family

Know instantly if a particular user is mobile, iOS, Android and what family of operating system they are using.

User Agent Identifier exposes an API and has supported examples for Ruby, PHP, Python, Node and Java.

Provisioning the add-on

User Agent Identifier can be attached to a Heroku application via the CLI:

$ heroku addons:create useragentidentifier
-----> Adding useragentidentifier to sharp-mountain-4005... done, v18 (free)

Once User Agent Identifier has been added a USERAGENTIDENTIFIER_API_KEY config variable will contain your specific API key granting access to the newly provisioned User Agent Identifier instance. This can be confirmed using the heroku config:get command.

$ heroku config:get USERAGENTIDENTIFIER_API_KEY
Bl4XHVbdsf5GIXQbqTfXR5IrpuuXER2kaVc2zNnA

After installing User Agent Identifier your application should be modified to fully integrate with the add-on.

Local setup

Environment setup

After provisioning the add-on it’s necessary to locally replicate the config vars so your development environment can operate against the service.

Use the Heroku Local command-line tool to configure, run and manage process types specified in your app’s Procfile. Heroku Local reads configuration variables from a .env file. To view all of your app’s config vars, type heroku config. Use the following command for each value that you want to add to your .env file.

$ heroku config:get USERAGENTIDENTIFIER_API_KEY -s  >> .env

For more information, see the Heroku Local article.

Input Parameter Descriptions

All languages will follow this call structure for inputs.

Using with Ruby

Install the User-Agent-Identifier gem.

# In your Gemfile
gem 'useragentidentifier', git: 'https://github.com/mbuckbee/User-Agent-Identifier-Gem.git'

Making a Request

> require 'user_agent_identifier'

# Note: the 'Controller' here is not a reference to Rails controllers
# but an internal structure, won't interfere with your Rails app and will
# work fine in a standalone ruby app or another framework

> uae = UserAgentIdentifier::APIController.new
> result = uae.lookup("Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_9_5) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/50.0.2661.102 Safari/537.36")

Using Results

> result.type
=> "desktop-browser"

> result.is_mobile
=> false

> result.is_android
=> false

> result.is_ios
=> false

> result.mobile_brand
=> ""

> result.mobile_browser
=> ""

> result.mobile_model
=> ""

> result.mobile_screen_width
=> 0

> result.mobile_screen_height
=> 0

> result.browser_name
=> "Chrome"

> result.operating_system
=> "OS X"

> result.operating_system_family
=> "OS X"

> result.producer
=> "Google Inc."

> result.version
=> "50.0.2661.102"

Using with PHP

<?php

$ch = curl_init('https://useragentidentifier.expeditedaddons.com/?api_key=' . getenv('USERAGENTIDENTIFIER_API_KEY') . '&user_agent=Mozilla');

$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

var_dump($response);

Using with Python

import os
from urllib2 import Request, urlopen

request = Request('https://useragentidentifier.expeditedaddons.com/?api_key=' + os.environ['USERAGENTIDENTIFIER_API_KEY'] + '&user_agent=Mozilla')

response_body = urlopen(request).read()
print response_body

Using with Node

var request = require('request');

request('https://useragentidentifier.expeditedaddons.com/?api_key=' + process.env.USERAGENTIDENTIFIER_API_KEY + '&user_agent=Mozilla', function (error, response, body) {
  console.log('Status:', response.statusCode);
  console.log('Headers:', JSON.stringify(response.headers));
  console.log('Response:', body);
});

Using with Java

// Maven : Add these dependencies to your pom.xml (java6+)
// <dependency>
//     <groupId>org.glassfish.jersey.core</groupId>
//     <artifactId>jersey-client</artifactId>
//     <version>2.8</version>
// </dependency>
// <dependency>
//     <groupId>org.glassfish.jersey.media</groupId>
//     <artifactId>jersey-media-json-jackson</artifactId>
//     <version>2.8</version>
// </dependency>

import javax.ws.rs.client.Client;
import javax.ws.rs.client.ClientBuilder;
import javax.ws.rs.client.Entity;
import javax.ws.rs.core.Response;
import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType;

Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
Response response = client.target('https://useragentidentifier.expeditedaddons.com/?api_key=' + System.getenv('USERAGENTIDENTIFIER_API_KEY') + '&user_agent=Mozilla}')
  .request(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN_TYPE)
  .get();

System.out.println("status: " + response.getStatus());
System.out.println("headers: " + response.getHeaders());
System.out.println("body:" + response.readEntity(String.class));

Result Field Descriptions

Dashboard

The User Agent Identifier dashboard allows you to monitor your API usage limits.

The dashboard can be accessed via the CLI:

$ heroku addons:open useragentidentifier
Opening useragentidentifier for sharp-mountain-4005

or by visiting the Heroku Dashboard and selecting the application in question. Select User Agent Identifier from the Add-ons menu.

Troubleshooting

As a sanity check it is sometimes useful to bypass your app stack and check the endpoint, your API Key and parameters directly.

Test with your browser

# Modify the following to use your actual API Key
https://useragentidentifier.expeditedaddons.com/?api_key=REPLACE_WITH_YOUR_USERAGENTIDENTIFIER_API_KEY&user_agent=Mozilla

A successful call will return your requested data with a HTTP result code of 200 along with your data. We recommend the JSON Formatter extension as a useful tool.

Your API key can be found on your User Agent Identifier dashboard.

Migrating between plans

Use the heroku addons:upgrade command to migrate to a new plan.

$ heroku addons:upgrade useragentidentifier:newplan
-----> Upgrading useragentidentifier:newplan to sharp-mountain-4005... done, v18 ($49/mo)
       Your plan has been updated to: useragentidentifier:newplan

Removing the add-on

User Agent Identifier can be removed via the CLI.

$ heroku addons:destroy useragentidentifier
-----> Removing useragentidentifier from sharp-mountain-4005... done, v20 (free)

Support

All User Agent Identifier support and runtime issues should be submitted via one of the Heroku Support channels. Any non-support related issues or product feedback is welcome at support@expeditedaddons.com