How can I get client information such as OS and browser

Question

I'm using JSP, Servlet to develop my web application.

I want to get client information such as: operation system, browser, resolution, ... whenever a client is using my website.

ZZ Coder · Answer 1 · 2009-08-25T13:57:37.523

73

Your best bet is User-Agent header. You can get it like this in JSP or Servlet,

String userAgent = request.getHeader("User-Agent");

The header looks like this,

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.13) Gecko/2009073021 Firefox/3.0.13

It provides detailed information on browser. However, it's pretty much free format so it's very hard to decipher every single one. You just need to figure out which browsers you will support and write parser for each one. When you try to identify the version of browser, always check newer version first. For example, IE6 user-agent may contain IE5 for backward compatibility. If you check IE5 first, IE6 will be categorized as IE5 also.

You can get a full list of all user-agent values from this web site,

http://www.user-agents.org/

With User-Agent, you can tell the exact version of the browser. You can get a pretty good idea on OS but you may not be able to distinguish between different versions of the same OS, for example, Windows NT and 2000 may use same User-Agent.

There is nothing about resolution. However, you can get this with Javascript on an AJAX call.

edited Aug 25 '09 at 13:57

answered Aug 25 '09 at 13:49

ZZ Coder

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Also note that none of that information can be taken for granted. A user agent might not provide a User-Agent header at all or lie about it. Both of those are rare, but you should keep that fact in mind if you rely on the information. – Joachim Sauer Aug 25 '09 at 14:00
@JoachimSauer Can you tell me the cases where user agent might not provide User-Agent header or lie about it? – RAS Jun 18 '13 at 12:35
1

@RAS: Opera, for example allows the user to select the user agent it sends (impersonating Firefox, Chrome or IE, on different OSes). And there's an extension for [Chrome](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/user-agent-switcher-for-c/djflhoibgkdhkhhcedjiklpkjnoahfmg), [Firefox](https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/) and about every other browser as well. – Joachim Sauer Jun 18 '13 at 12:46
@JoachimSauer thanks for the information but I just asked because currently I'm running in the same issue. I'm using Firefox only. Here's the link of the question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17167491/httpservletrequestgetheaderuser-agent-returns-null-browser-name – RAS Jun 18 '13 at 13:08

lambodar · Answer 2 · 2021-07-19T06:44:47.103

In Java there is no direct way to get browser and OS related information.

But to get this few third-party tools are available.

Instead of trusting third-party tools, I suggest you to parse the user agent.

String  browserDetails  =   request.getHeader("User-Agent");

By doing this you can separate the browser details and OS related information easily according to your requirement. PFB the snippet for reference (you can replace this with a switch case as well).

        String  browserDetails  =   request.getHeader("User-Agent");
        String  userAgent       =   browserDetails;
        String  user            =   userAgent.toLowerCase();
    
        String os = "";
        String browser = "";

        log.info("User Agent for the request is===>"+browserDetails);
        //=================OS=======================
         if (userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf("windows") >= 0 )
         {
             os = "Windows";
         } else if(userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf("mac") >= 0)
         {
             os = "Mac";
         } else if(userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf("x11") >= 0)
         {
             os = "Unix";
         } else if(userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf("android") >= 0)
         {
             os = "Android";
         } else if(userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf("iphone") >= 0)
         {
             os = "IPhone";
         }else{
             os = "UnKnown, More-Info: "+userAgent;
         }
         //===============Browser===========================
        if (user.contains("msie"))
        {
            String substring=userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("MSIE")).split(";")[0];
            browser=substring.split(" ")[0].replace("MSIE", "IE")+"-"+substring.split(" ")[1];
        } else if (user.contains("safari") && user.contains("version"))
        {
            browser=(userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("Safari")).split(" ")[0]).split("/")[0]+"-"+(userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("Version")).split(" ")[0]).split("/")[1];
        } else if ( user.contains("opr") || user.contains("opera"))
        {
            if(user.contains("opera"))
                browser=(userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("Opera")).split(" ")[0]).split("/")[0]+"-"+(userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("Version")).split(" ")[0]).split("/")[1];
            else if(user.contains("opr"))
                browser=((userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("OPR")).split(" ")[0]).replace("/", "-")).replace("OPR", "Opera");
        } else if (user.contains("chrome"))
        {
            browser=(userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("Chrome")).split(" ")[0]).replace("/", "-");
        } else if ((user.indexOf("mozilla/7.0") > -1) || (user.indexOf("netscape6") != -1)  || (user.indexOf("mozilla/4.7") != -1) || (user.indexOf("mozilla/4.78") != -1) || (user.indexOf("mozilla/4.08") != -1) || (user.indexOf("mozilla/3") != -1) )
        {
            //browser=(userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("MSIE")).split(" ")[0]).replace("/", "-");
            browser = "Netscape-?";
                  
        } else if (user.contains("firefox"))
        {
            browser=(userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("Firefox")).split(" ")[0]).replace("/", "-");
        } else if(user.contains("rv"))
        {
            browser="IE-" + user.substring(user.indexOf("rv") + 3, user.indexOf(")"));
        } else
        {
            browser = "UnKnown, More-Info: "+userAgent;
        }
        log.info("Operating System======>"+os);
        log.info("Browser Name==========>"+browser);

You can add an extra check for Edge like that - else if (user.contains("edge")) { browser = (userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("Edge")).split(" ")[0]).replace("/", "-"); } — Md. Nowshad Hasan, Apr 27 '20 at 15:03
Bad decision imho. It is like writing your own encryption library. You better don't. This is so error prone. What about edge? And recently they switched to the chromium based edge and the ua only contains "edg". You constantly have to update your code. There are so many user agents you don't recognize or falsely identify. Prefer an active ua-parsing project which is actively maintained. The results will be much better. — Lonzak, Sep 09 '20 at 13:03
@Lonzak agreed with you on update part, also it's true when you use 3rd party library. On release of new browser or OS you have to update the library and magic won't happen automatically. It's unfair to compare with encryption library :) — lambodar, Sep 10 '20 at 08:19
It is a general question: Writing something yourself or using a library. In this case I would clearly decide to go with a library (that's what I meant). An encryption library was just an example. You could also say writing your own XML parser - which I would recommend either) — Lonzak, Sep 10 '20 at 12:56
It's individual preference, for a 10 line code I'll never going to use an entire library. Using 3rd party library comes with it's own risk. — lambodar, Sep 12 '20 at 03:57

score 16 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 09 '20 at 13:07

Update: The project is EOL and not maintained anymore. He recommends switching to the Browscap project.

You can use the bitwalker useragentutils library: https://github.com/HaraldWalker/user-agent-utils. It will provide you information about the Browser (name, type, version, manufacturer, etc.) and about the OperatingSystem. A good thing about it is that it is maintained. Access the link that I have provided to see the Maven dependency that you need to add to you project in order to use it.

See below sample code that returns the browser name and browser version.

    UserAgent userAgent = UserAgent.parseUserAgentString(request.getHeader("User-Agent"));
    Browser browser = userAgent.getBrowser();

    String browserName = browser.getName();
    //or 
    // String browserName = browser.getGroup().getName();
    Version browserVersion = userAgent.getBrowserVersion();
    System.out.println("The user is using browser " + browserName + " - version " + browserVersion);

Heads up. That library is no longer maintained and has an "end of life" notice on the github page linked to. — Todd, Dec 30 '19 at 23:32

Aaron Digulla · Answer 4 · 2012-09-11T14:25:23.030

6

The browser sends this information in the HTTP header. See the snoop example of Tomcat for some code (source, online demo).

Note that this information is not reliable. Browser can and do lie about who they are and what OS they run on.

edited Sep 11 '12 at 14:25

answered Aug 25 '09 at 09:06

Aaron Digulla

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score 6 · Answer 5 · edited Sep 09 '20 at 12:57

6

There are two not bad libs for parsing user agent strings:

user-agent-utils - java only, reached end-of-life
ua-parser - multilanguage, archived
uap-java - java implementation of above, actively maintained

edited Sep 09 '20 at 12:57

Lonzak

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answered Jan 12 '17 at 19:05

tworec

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uap-java - is last updated on Jun 7, 2021. – D.A.H Jun 14 '22 at 09:49
Probably some uap-java maintainer noticed this comment and updated it 4 days ago :) – tworec Jun 22 '22 at 16:35

score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 10 '20 at 06:22

You can use browscap-java to get browser's information.

For Example:

UserAgentParser parser = new UserAgentService().loadParser(Arrays.asList(BrowsCapField.BROWSER));
    Capabilities capabilities = parser.parse(user_agent);

    String browser = capabilities.getBrowser();

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Aug 18 '19 at 00:01

Here's my code that works, as of today, with some of the latest browsers.

Naturally, it will break as User-Agent's evolve, but it's simple, and easy to fix.

    String userAgent = "Unknown";
    String osType = "Unknown";
    String osVersion = "Unknown";
    String browserType = "Unknown";
    String browserVersion = "Unknown";
    String deviceType = "Unknown";

    try {
        userAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/73.0.3683.103 Safari/537.36 OPR/60.0.3255.165";
        //userAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0";
        //userAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/76.0.3809.100 Safari/537.36";
        //userAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/64.0.3282.140 Safari/537.36 Edge/17.17134";
        //userAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 12_3_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/12.1.1 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1";
        boolean exceptionTest = false;
        if(exceptionTest) throw new Exception("EXCEPTION TEST");

        if (userAgent.indexOf("Windows NT") >= 0) {
            osType = "Windows";
            osVersion = userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("Windows NT ")+11, userAgent.indexOf(";"));

        } else if (userAgent.indexOf("Mac OS") >= 0) {
            osType = "Mac";
            osVersion = userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("Mac OS ")+7, userAgent.indexOf(")"));

            if(userAgent.indexOf("iPhone") >= 0) {
                deviceType = "iPhone";
            } else if(userAgent.indexOf("iPad") >= 0) {
                deviceType = "iPad";
            }

        } else if (userAgent.indexOf("X11") >= 0) {
            osType = "Unix";
            osVersion = "Unknown";

        } else if (userAgent.indexOf("android") >= 0) {
            osType = "Android";
            osVersion = "Unknown";
        }
        logger.trace("end of os section");

        if (userAgent.contains("Edge/")) {
            browserType = "Edge";
            browserVersion = userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("Edge")).split("/")[1];

        } else if (userAgent.contains("Safari/") && userAgent.contains("Version/")) {
            browserType = "Safari";
            browserVersion = userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("Version/")+8).split(" ")[0];

        } else if (userAgent.contains("OPR/") || userAgent.contains("Opera/")) {
            browserType = "Opera";
            browserVersion = userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("OPR")).split("/")[1];

        } else if (userAgent.contains("Chrome/")) {
            browserType = "Chrome"; 
            browserVersion = userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("Chrome")).split("/")[1];
            browserVersion = browserVersion.split(" ")[0];

        } else if (userAgent.contains("Firefox/")) {
            browserType = "Firefox"; 
            browserVersion = userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("Firefox")).split("/")[1];
        }            
        logger.trace("end of browser section");

    } catch (Exception ex) {
        logger.error("ERROR: " +ex);            
    }

    logger.debug(
              "\n userAgent: " + userAgent
            + "\n osType: " + osType
            + "\n osVersion: " + osVersion
            + "\n browserType: " + browserType
            + "\n browserVersion: " + browserVersion
            + "\n deviceType: " + deviceType
            );

Logger Output:

 userAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/73.0.3683.103 Safari/537.36 OPR/60.0.3255.165
 osType: Windows
 osVersion: 10.0
 browserType: Opera
 browserVersion: 60.0.3255.165
 deviceType: Unknown

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Aug 03 '16 at 07:14

You cannot reliably get this information. The basis of several answers provided here is to examine the User-Agent header of the HTTP request. However, there is no way to know if the information in the User-Agent header is truthful. The client sending the request can write anything in that header. So its content can be spoofed, or not sent at all.

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Jun 07 '19 at 00:41

This code is based on the most voted question but I might be easier to use

public enum OS {

    WINDOWS,
    MAC,
    LINUX,
    ANDROID,
    IPHONE,
    UNKNOWN;

    public static OS valueOf(HttpServletRequest request) {

        final String userAgent = request.getHeader("User-Agent");
        final OS toReturn;

        if (userAgent == null || userAgent.isEmpty()) {
            toReturn = UNKNOWN;
        } else if (userAgent.toLowerCase().contains("windows")) {
            toReturn = WINDOWS;
        } else if (userAgent.toLowerCase().contains("mac")) {
            toReturn = MAC;
        } else if (userAgent.toLowerCase().contains("x11")) {
            toReturn = LINUX;
        } else if (userAgent.toLowerCase().contains("android")) {
            toReturn = ANDROID;
        } else if (userAgent.toLowerCase().contains("iphone")) {
            toReturn = IPHONE;
        } else {
            toReturn = UNKNOWN;
        }

        return toReturn;
    }

}

score -2 · Answer 10 · answered Jan 13 '15 at 07:33

-2

else if(user.contains("rv:11.0"))
            {
                String substring=userAgent.substring(userAgent.indexOf("rv")).split("\\)")[0];
                browser=substring.split(":")[0].replace("rv", "IE")+"-"+substring.split(":")[1];

            }

answered Jan 13 '15 at 07:33

Vishal Somaiya

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Consider providing an explanation to your answer – arghtype Jan 13 '15 at 08:03
To get IE11 information . put this code with above example . – Vishal Somaiya Mar 24 '15 at 18:24

How can I get client information such as OS and browser

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