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What's Covered

This tutorial illustrates how to append a CSV file containing User-Agent strings with IsMobile, PlatformName and PlatformVersion properties. The following aspects of the API are covered:

  • How to perform a User-Agent match.
  • How to reuse resources to perform subsequent matching.
  • How to retrieve match results for a specific property.
  • How to append a property value to a CSV file.

Code and Explanation

Offline processing 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;

  • Instantiate the 51Degrees device detection provider with these properties 

    									
my $provider = new FiftyOneDegrees::PatternV3::Provider(
	$dataFile,
	$properties,
	$cacheSize,
	$poolSize);
  • Open an input file with a list of User-Agents, and an output file, 

    									
open my $file_in, "../../data/20000 User Agents.csv";
open file_out, ">output.csv";
  • Write a header to the output file with the property names in '|' separated CSV format ('|' separated because some User-Agents contain commas) 

    									
print file_out "User-Agent";
foreach $property (@$properties) {
	print file_out "|".$property;
}
print file_out "\n";
  • For the first 20 User-Agents in the input file, perform a match then write the User-Agent along with the values for chosen properties to the CSV. 

    									
while( my $userAgent = <$file_in>) {
	chomp $userAgent;
	my $match = $provider->getMatch($userAgent);
	print file_out $userAgent;
	foreach $property (@$properties) {
		print file_out "|".$match->getValue($property);
	}
	print file_out "\n";
	last if $. == 20;
}
    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,PlatformName,PlatformVersion";
my $cacheSize = 10000;
my $poolSize = 20;

my $inputFile = "../../data/20000 User Agents.csv";
my $outputFile = "offlineProcessingOutput.csv";

# 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);
# Fetches an array of available properties from the provider.
my $properties = $provider->getAvailableProperties();

say "Starting Offline Processing.";

# Opens input and output files, writes a header to the output file containing
# the column titles. Then reads the first 20 User-Agents from the input
# file, runs a match for each and writes results to the output file.

open my $file_in, $inputFile;
open file_out, ">$outputFile";

print file_out "User-Agent";
foreach $property (@$properties) {
    print file_out "|".$property;
}
print file_out "\n";

while( my $userAgent = <$file_in>) {
    chomp $userAgent;
    my $match = $provider->getMatch($userAgent);
    print file_out $userAgent;
    foreach $property (@$properties) {
        print file_out "|".$match->getValue($property);
    }
    print file_out "\n";
    last if $. == 20;
}
close $file_in;
close $file_out;

say "Output Written to $outputFile";
    Full Source File

    • Summary

    Offline device detection is frequently required for a variety of reasons such as generating reports. The example is based on an actual support request where several properties had to be added to the CSV file before it could be passed on for another department to use.

    This tutorial covered how to use the detector offline to append the first 20 lines of a CSV file with Lite properties: IsMobile , PlatformName and PlatformVersion . Using a Premium or an Enterprise data file gives you access to a far greater number of properties including HardwareVendor , PriceBand , ScreenInchesWidth , IsCrawler and more. A full list of properties and the data file version they are present in can be viewed in the Property Dictionary .

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