How to detect Browser type in Django?

Question

How can i detect which browser type the client is using. I have a problem where i have to ask people to use different browser (Firefox) instead of IE. How can i get this information.

I know http request has this information (Header). How will i get the navigator.appName from the view.py in the Django framework ?

Answer 1

You can extract that information from the request object like so:

request.META['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] 

Answer 2

There are multiple ways of getting that done.

The easiest way is what @digitaldreamer recommended. That is you can make a meta request for HTTP_USER_AGENT.

request.META['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] 

But I would also recommend you to take a look at the Django User Agents library.

Install it with pip

pip install pyyaml ua-parser user-agents pip install django-user-agents 

And configure settings.py:

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (     # other middlewares...     'django_user_agents.middleware.UserAgentMiddleware', )  INSTALLED_APPS = (     # Other apps...     'django_user_agents', )  # Cache backend is optional, but recommended to speed up user agent parsing CACHES = {     'default': {         'BACKEND': 'django.core.cache.backends.memcached.MemcachedCache',         'LOCATION': '127.0.0.1:11211',     } }  # Name of cache backend to cache user agents. If it not specified default # cache alias will be used. Set to `None` to disable caching. USER_AGENTS_CACHE = 'default' 

Usage is pretty simple as well.

A user_agent attribute will now be added to request, which you can use in views.py:

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'