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# get_browser

get_browser -- Tells what the user's browser is capable of.

## Description

`object get_browser`(string [user_agent] );

get_browser() attempts to determine the capabilities of the user's browser. This is done by looking up the browser's information in the `browscap.ini` file. By default, the value of $HTTP_USER_AGENT is used; however, you can alter this (i.e., look up another browser's info) by passing the optional `user_agent` parameter to get_browser().

The information is returned in an object, which will contain various data elements representing, for instance, the browser's major and minor version numbers and ID string; true/false values for features such as frames, JavaScript, and cookies; and so forth.

While `browscap.ini` contains information on many browsers, it relies on user updates to keep the database current. The format of the file is fairly self-explanatory.

The following example shows how one might list all available information retrieved about the user's browser.

Example 1. Get_browser() example

      1
      2 <?php
      3 function list_array ($array) {
      4     while (list ($key, $value) = each ($array)) {
      5         $str .= "<b>$key:</b> $value<br>\n";
      6     }
      7     return $str;
      8 }
      9 echo "$HTTP_USER_AGENT<hr>\n";
     10 $browser = get_browser();
     11 echo list_array ((array) $browser);
     12 ?>
     13

The output of the above script would look something like this:

      1
      2 Mozilla/4.5 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.9 i586)<hr>
      3 <b>browser_name_pattern:</b> Mozilla/4\.5.*<br>
      4 <b>parent:</b> Netscape 4.0<br>
      5 <b>platform:</b> Unknown<br>
      6 <b>majorver:</b> 4<br>
      7 <b>minorver:</b> 5<br>
      8 <b>browser:</b> Netscape<br>
      9 <b>version:</b> 4<br>
     10 <b>frames:</b> 1<br>
     11 <b>tables:</b> 1<br>
     12 <b>cookies:</b> 1<br>
     13 <b>backgroundsounds:</b> <br>
     14 <b>vbscript:</b> <br>
     15 <b>javascript:</b> 1<br>
     16 <b>javaapplets:</b> 1<br>
     17 <b>activexcontrols:</b> <br>
     18 <b>beta:</b> <br>
     19 <b>crawler:</b> <br>
     20 <b>authenticodeupdate:</b> <br>
     21 <b>msn:</b> <br>
     22

In order for this to work, your browscap configuration file setting must point to the correct location of the `browscap.ini` file.

For more information (including locations from which you may obtain a `browscap.ini` file), check the PHP FAQ at http://www.php.net/FAQ.html.

> Note: Browscap support was added to PHP in version 3.0b2.

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