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We're getting some odd errors reported on our website, and are trying to find out some details on who is doing the looking. I'm looking at a sample user-agent strings and seeing things like:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011913 Firefox/3.0.6
Now some of this is obvious, but some of it is less so ("U"?) From the pattern of the hits, I'd suspect that this was a robot, but I don't see anything that I recognize in this string to clue me in to that. I'd like to know what some of the things in this (and other different) strings mean. Is there a comprehensive reference somewhere?
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A user agent is a piece of software that acts on behalf of a user, such as a web browser. A user agent string however is sent as an HTTP request header by the browser and identifies which operating system is being used, the browser version, and other information which is provided to the web server.
A User Agent (UA) string is a type of HTTP header request that contains information on the device. For example, if you browse the web on your smartphone, your device will send a HTTP request header to the web server, saying that it is a mobile device.
That's where WhatIsMyBrowser.com steps in - we decode your user agent string to figure out everything it's saying. Check out our user agent analyser page, which gives you a neat breakdown of all the things we can tell you about your browser and computer based on your user agent.
The User-Agent (UA) string is contained in the HTTP headers and is intended to identify devices requesting online content. The User-Agent tells the server what the visiting device is (among many other things) and this information can be used to determine what content to return.
This Wikipedia page gives a good overview, and describes the meaning of the 'U' attribute as well.
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User-agent strings (as all request headers) are not to be trusted at all, but I recommend www.useragentstring.com as a reference for helping you determine the patterns you're interested in.
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