How do you detect a mobile device with PHP?

Question

I'm looking for the best method/practice to use for detecting if a person is using a mobile device to view a website. I'd like to be able to adjust the templates of the website if a mobile device is detected so it's easier to view.

What is the most reliable and effective method for detecting mobile devices?

Solution 1

You can use this project to do that:

if ($detect->isMobile()) {
    // Any mobile device.
}

Solution 2

you can get the server agent and use a preg_match to check it. for example:

$isMobile=(bool)preg_match("/(android|avantgo|blackberry|bolt|boost|cricket|docomo|fone|hiptop|mini|mobi|palm|phone|pie|tablet|up\.browser|up\.link|webos|wos)/i", $_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"]);

i got a better version of the code from here:

$isMobile = (bool)preg_match('#\b(ip(hone|od|ad)|android|opera m(ob|in)i|windows (phone|ce)|blackberry|tablet'.
                    '|s(ymbian|eries60|amsung)|p(laybook|alm|rofile/midp|laystation portable)|nokia|fennec|htc[\-_]'.
                    '|mobile|up\.browser|[1-4][0-9]{2}x[1-4][0-9]{2})\b#i', $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] );

and then you can :

if(isMobile())
    header("Location: http://m.site.com/");

Solution 3

you could try the http://detectmobilebrowsers.com/ libraries. has a piece of code to detect mobile browsers for almost everything you would need to be able to detect mobile browsers.

Solution 4

I suggest of use this class for a good and complete mobile detection php-mobile-detect

or you must filter the user agent

View more solutions

Comments

[Cory Nickerson]

Is such a large script necessary to detect a mobile device? Seems like their methods depend on individual models of phones and their operating systems which are always changing. I wont want to have to update my software like every 3 days with the rate new phones come out.

[Sam]

@CoryNickerson if you want a good script, that is the best actually, otherwise you must do all manually filtering the user agent from php