NodeJS detect either the client(mobile) is a browser or an application?

Question

I have developed a simple REST api using NODE and EXPRESS. And I already have a web-app(browser) and a native mobile application. Now I need to check if the incoming request is from web-browser or from native application.

I have successfully detected the device for incoming request coming from browser via USER-AGENT.

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 09 '20 at 15:25

I will suggest using the Host header. For example: If your web application is hosted at example.com then all requests will have Host header set to example.com. In your mobile application, you can manually set all request headers to have a different Host header like Host:app.example.com.

A good practice to have limited set of hostnames that accepted by the server.

Make sure you do not tight any security logic to that header. Every HTTP client can fake/override that value.

Paul Sweatte · Answer 2 · 2018-03-25T23:18:29.233

window.navigator.standalone for iOS, and window.matchMedia('(display-mode: standalone)').matches for Android to detect this:

isInWebAppiOS = (window.navigator.standalone == true);
isInWebAppChrome = (window.matchMedia('(display-mode: standalone)').matches);

Set a cookie for each to pass to the server.

References

Question is how to detect this in NodeJS - The window object doesn't exist in node.. :( — Dmitriy, Apr 01 '20 at 16:29

NodeJS detect either the client(mobile) is a browser or an application?

2 Answers2