Introduction
These pages show you how to set up and use the 51Degrees device detection API. For more information on how device detection works and can benefit you, please visit our Device Detection Page . If you’re using our cloud based device detection, you should refer to the Cloud API Documentation pages . All source code, and the free Lite data, is licensed under the Mozilla Public License version 2 .
Get Going With Our Tutorials
For more examples see the Tutorials section.
Implementation
The Java API is capable of operating in two modes: Stream and Memory.
Mode | Description |
---|---|
Memory | In memory mode the API will load the entire data file into memory as either a byte array or the set of entities. Memory mode is considerably faster than stream mode but requires significantly more main memory. |
Stream | In stream mode the API will only load data file headers and indexes of the entities. Stream mode is very memory efficient and has an extremely fast startup time whilst still delivering fast detections. Stream mode should be fast enough for most purposes. |
How Does Device Detection Work?
51Degrees device detection implementation does not rely on regular expressions, instead our algorithm looks at character positions in the HTTP User-Agent string and picks a set of signatures that represents the closest match. Then a set of four profiles (one for each of the following components: hardware, software, browser and crawler) is derived from those signatures. Properties and the corresponding values are then derived from those profiles. For more information and examples please see the How Device Detection Works page.
Premium and Enterprise data files can benefit from automatic update capabilities. If you're a Lite user you can contact us for a free evaluation to experience the benefits of automatic updates and check out the extra properties and features that come with Premium and Enterprise data files.
The latest Premium and Enterprise data files can be obtained from the downloads area.
Prerequisites and Compatibility
The source code is compatible with Java versions 1.6+ (1.7+ if using Automatic Updates)