Detect mobile devices with Django and Python 3

Question

I am struggling to find an easy way to detect if the request comes from a mobile device in my Django views.

I am trying to implement something like this:

#views.py  def myfunction(request):      ...     if request.mobile:         is_mobile = True     else:         is_mobile = False      context = {         ... ,         'is_mobile': is_mobile,     }     return render(request, 'mytemplate.html', context) 

And in mytemplate.html:

{% if is_mobile %}         show something {% else %}     show something else {% endif %} 

Everywhere I checked (for instance here or here), minidetector is recommended. I have installed different versions: pip install minidetector, pip install minidetector2, as well as directly a couple of github repositories, but none of them are compatible with Python 3.

So here my question: Is there any version/fork of minidetector that is compatible with Python 3? If not, what are the alternatives?

Answer 1

Django User Agents package is compatible with Python 3.

Follow the installation instructions in the link provided above and then you can use it as follows:

def my_view(request):      # Let's assume that the visitor uses an iPhone...     request.user_agent.is_mobile # returns True     request.user_agent.is_tablet # returns False     request.user_agent.is_touch_capable # returns True     request.user_agent.is_pc # returns False     request.user_agent.is_bot # returns False      # Accessing user agent's browser attributes     request.user_agent.browser  # returns Browser(family=u'Mobile Safari', version=(5, 1), version_string='5.1')     request.user_agent.browser.family  # returns 'Mobile Safari'     request.user_agent.browser.version  # returns (5, 1)     request.user_agent.browser.version_string   # returns '5.1'      # Operating System properties     request.user_agent.os  # returns OperatingSystem(family=u'iOS', version=(5, 1), version_string='5.1')     request.user_agent.os.family  # returns 'iOS'     request.user_agent.os.version  # returns (5, 1)     request.user_agent.os.version_string  # returns '5.1'      # Device properties     request.user_agent.device  # returns Device(family='iPhone')     request.user_agent.device.family  # returns 'iPhone' 

The usage in template is as follows:

{% if request.user_agent.is_mobile %}     Do stuff here... {% endif %} 

However, note that the middleware class has changed in Django 1.10. So if you are using Django 1.10 +, you will have to modify the middleware class definition in this Package as given in this GitHub issue tracker page.

Answer 2

I found an alternative way, starting from this answer.

By adding an additional function into views.py:

import re  def mobile(request): """Return True if the request comes from a mobile device."""      MOBILE_AGENT_RE=re.compile(r".*(iphone|mobile|androidtouch)",re.IGNORECASE)      if MOBILE_AGENT_RE.match(request.META['HTTP_USER_AGENT']):         return True     else:         return False   def myfunction(request):      ...     if mobile(request):         is_mobile = True     else:         is_mobile = False      context = {         ... ,         'is_mobile': is_mobile,     }     return render(request, 'mytemplate.html', context)