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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

Getting started example of using 51Degrees device detection. The example shows how to:

  1. Set the various settings for 51Degrees detector

    										
    my $filename = "51Degrees-LiteV3.2.dat";
    my $propertyList = "IsMobile";
    my $cacheSize = 10000;
    my $poolSize = 20;
    
    										
  2. Instantiate the 51Degrees device detection provider with these properties

    										
    my $provider = new FiftyOneDegrees::PatternV3::Provider(
    	$dataFile,
    	$properties,
    	$cacheSize,
    	$poolSize);
    
    										
  3. Produce a match for a single HTTP User-Agent header

    										
    my $match = $provider->getMatch($userAgent)
    
    										
  4. Extract the value of the IsMobile property

    										
    $match->getValue('IsMobile')
    
    										
This example assumes you are running from the original subdirectory i.e. Device-Detection/perl/examples/ and the 51Degrees Perl module is installed.

Full Source File
										
use FiftyOneDegrees::PatternV3;
use feature qw/say/;

my $filename = "../../data/51Degrees-LiteV3.2.dat";
my $propertyList = "IsMobile";
my $cacheSize = 10000;
my $poolSize = 20;

# User-Agent string of an iPhone mobile device.
my $mobileUserAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 7_1 like Mac OS X) ".
"AppleWebKit/537.51.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) 'Version/7.0 ".
"Mobile/11D167 Safari/9537.53";

# User-Agent string of Firefox Web browser version 41 on desktop.
my $desktopUserAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:41.0) ".
"Gecko/20100101 Firefox/41.0";

# User-Agent string of a MediaHub device.
my $mediaHubUserAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.4.2; X7 Quad Core ".
"Build/KOT49H) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 ".
"Chrome/30.0.0.0 Safari/537.36";

# Initialises the device detection provider with the settings declared above.
# This uses Lite data file. For more info
# see:
# <a href="https://51degrees.com/compare-data-options">compare data options
# </a>

my $provider = new FiftyOneDegrees::PatternV3::Provider(
    $filename,
    $propertyList,
    $cacheSize,
    $poolSize);

say "Starting Getting Started Example.";

# Carries out a match with a mobile User-Agent.
say "\nMobile User-Agent: $mobileUserAgent";
my $match = $provider->getMatch($mobileUserAgent);
my $isMobile =  $match->getValue("IsMobile");
say "   IsMobile: $isMobile";

# Carries out a desktop with a mobile User-Agent.
say "\nDesktop User-Agent: $desktopUserAgent";
my $match = $provider->getMatch($desktopUserAgent);
my $isMobile =  $match->getValue("IsMobile");
say "   IsMobile: $isMobile";

# Carries out a MediaHub with a mobile User-Agent.
say "\nMediaHub User-Agent: $mediaHubUserAgent";
my $match = $provider->getMatch($mediaHubUserAgent);
my $isMobile =  $match->getValue("IsMobile");
say "   IsMobile: $isMobile";


										
Full Source File

For more examples see the tutorial pages.

Implementation

Perl API loads device data from the data file into memory. The amount of memory required will depend on the data file you use.

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

  • make
  • Perl 5.0.1+
  • g++ 4.8.4+
  • SWIG 2.0+