There are two ways to access the device detection API, a self-hosted on-premise version and a cloud version accessed through calls to the 51Degrees servers.

The new 51Degrees PHP common API aims to make switch from Cloud based Device-Detection to the On-Premise version much easier for developers. It allows you to switch without the need to re-write your code by providing a common API between the two solutions connected by an interface which communicates with the core software.

Php Sessions

The common API uses PHP sessions to store information (in variables) to be used across multiple pages.

You can download the PHP Common API from the Device Detection Github repository here .

Getting started is as simple as copying the contents of the common-api/51Degrees directory into your webservers document root.

									
									# For apache based webservers
$ cp -R Device-Detection/php/common-api/51Degrees /var/www/html/

									
								

Edit the config.php file within the common-api/51Degrees directory to configure the Common API. Include this file using require() in a PHP script before initialising the provider:

									
									require("../config.php");
$provider = FiftyOneDegrees\FiftyOneDegreesGetProvider($settings);
									
								

Both cloud and on Premise

Passed in during provider initialisation.

Property	Type	Required	Default	Description
FiftyOneProvider	String	Mandatory	None	Set to Cloud/TRIE/Pattern
FiftyoneShareUsage	Boolean	Optional	True	Whether the API should send usage data.
FiftyOneLicence	String	See description	None	Not required for On-Premise as manual datafile updates can be used rather than automatic updates. Required for Cloud.
FiftyOneLogLevel	String	Optional	Fatal	Either Debug, Info, Warn or Fatal – minimum log level to log to file.
FiftyOneLogFile	String	Optional	./51Degrees.log	Path to log file.

Cloud only

Passed in during provider initialisation, these can be left blank when using On-Premise Device-Detection.

Property	Type	Required	Default	Description
FiftyOneUseSession	Boolean	Optional	True	Whether the cloud API should store detection results in the session.
FiftyOneSessionLifetime	Integer	Optional	None	length of time to keep matches in session for.
FiftyOneProperties	String Array	Optional	All Properties	An array of which properties to fetch (if left blank all are fetched). For the On-Premise version this is set in the extension properties. For more information about available properties see the Property Dictionary.

Example configuration

The following shows an example of the contents of config.php.

									
									$settings = array(
    "FiftyOneProvider"=>"Cloud",
    "FiftyoneShareUsage"=>true,
    "FiftyOneLicence"=>"***YOUR_LICENCE_KEY***",
    "FiftyOneLogLevel"=>"fatal",
    "FiftyOneLogFile"=>"51degrees.log",
    "FiftyOneUseSession"=>true,
    "FiftyOneSessionLifetime"=>"60",
    "FiftyOneProperties"=>array("IsMobile","HardwareVendor","PlatformName")
);
									
								

To use the 51Degrees PHP Common API, create a new session then require the common API and configuration files. Fetch the provider, this will have been initialised on server startup if you have migrated to an On-Premise extension. This object can be called to process a new match object which can return properties of the specific mathced device.

									
									<?php
session_start();
require("../51degrees.php");
require("../config.php");
$provider = FiftyOneDegrees\FiftyOneDegreesGetProvider($settings);
$match = $provider->getMatch($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
echo $match->getValue('IsMobile');
?>
									
								

The PHP common API supports logging.

This is handled by the ‘ logger.php ’ script

Events are logged in ‘ ./51degrees.log ’ which is the default setting.

Make sure that the webserver user group has write access to the current working drectory or create the file ' 51degrees.log '. On Linux systems, set the file permissions so that the server user/group has write access.

Best practise dictates that the location for the log file should be set to ' /var/log/51degrees/ ' this can be setting when passing parameters to the provider.