Is it possible to get the user-agent from webView object?

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

Does anyone know if there is a way to “grab” the user-agent from a webView object? When I instantiate a webview I need to grab the user-agent and store it in a variable that I can later use to override the user-agent field in an HTTP request before I make a network.request() to a particular server.

I’ve searched through Corona’s documentation and haven’t seen anything to answer my question. Neither do I see anything on the forums concerning this as well.

Thanks for any help!

Guy

#2

I don’t believe you can…

Rob

#3

I was afraid of that.

Thanks for answering.

Guy

#4

This may not be possible for you if you don’t control your own web service, but you could craft a php page that just returns the user-agent header in the response body and request that page before your webView request. I haven’t looked, but there may even be publicly available pages that return the user-agent and other request headers.

#5

Hmm, php looks like it would do what I need. However, I don’t know any php but I looked on the internet and found this. At first glance it looks like it would print out what I need??? If so, perhaps I can save the user-agent to a lua variable?

\<?php echo $\_SERVER['HTTP\_USER\_AGENT'] . "\n\n"; $browser = get\_browser(null, true); print\_r($browser); ?\>

Also, I’m not sure how to incorporate php into lua. I looked on the corona forums and didn’t really find an answer. So, how does one incorporate php into corona?

Thanks for any guidance possible,

Guy

#6

PHP cannot be hosted in Corona – it needs to live on a web server that supports PHP. If you have a web server, you would create a file on it and then request it from Corona using network.request().

Example:

getUserAgent.php
[lua]<?php
echo $_SERVER[‘HTTP_USER_AGENT’];
?>[/lua]

That’s all you need to put on the web server. Then, in your Corona code, you would do this to get the user agent string into a variable:
[lua]local userAgent --variable that will store the user-agent string

local function networkListener( event )

if ( event.isError ) then
print( “Network error!” )
else
userAgent = event.response
print ( "RESPONSE: " … event.response )
end
end

network.request( “http://your website.com/getUserAgent.php”, “GET”, networkListener )[/lua]

Again, this is only possible if you have access to a web server that supports a scripting language such as PHP. Alternatively, there may already be a page publicly hosted somewhere on the internet that does this, but I have not looked.

#7

Thanks! This is exactly what I need. It makes sense now. Thanks for the explanation!

Guy

#8

My only concern is that the UA for a webView could be different than the UA for a network.requests() (in particular since you can set the UA for network request!)

Rob

#9

Thanks Rob, 

You are correct. I eventually figured that out. I needed to send the UA from a cell phone to a remote server. Apparently IOS doesn’t send a proper UA. I eventually had to create my own UA to send by retrieving different system info and piecing them together to make a UA that the server would accept.

Guy

#10

I don’t believe you can…

Rob

#11

I was afraid of that.

Thanks for answering.

Guy

#12

This may not be possible for you if you don’t control your own web service, but you could craft a php page that just returns the user-agent header in the response body and request that page before your webView request. I haven’t looked, but there may even be publicly available pages that return the user-agent and other request headers.

#13

Hmm, php looks like it would do what I need. However, I don’t know any php but I looked on the internet and found this. At first glance it looks like it would print out what I need??? If so, perhaps I can save the user-agent to a lua variable?

\<?php echo $\_SERVER['HTTP\_USER\_AGENT'] . "\n\n"; $browser = get\_browser(null, true); print\_r($browser); ?\>

Also, I’m not sure how to incorporate php into lua. I looked on the corona forums and didn’t really find an answer. So, how does one incorporate php into corona?

Thanks for any guidance possible,

Guy

#14

PHP cannot be hosted in Corona – it needs to live on a web server that supports PHP. If you have a web server, you would create a file on it and then request it from Corona using network.request().

Example:

getUserAgent.php
[lua]<?php
echo $_SERVER[‘HTTP_USER_AGENT’];
?>[/lua]

That’s all you need to put on the web server. Then, in your Corona code, you would do this to get the user agent string into a variable:
[lua]local userAgent --variable that will store the user-agent string

local function networkListener( event )

if ( event.isError ) then
print( “Network error!” )
else
userAgent = event.response
print ( "RESPONSE: " … event.response )
end
end

network.request( “http://your website.com/getUserAgent.php”, “GET”, networkListener )[/lua]

Again, this is only possible if you have access to a web server that supports a scripting language such as PHP. Alternatively, there may already be a page publicly hosted somewhere on the internet that does this, but I have not looked.

#15

Thanks! This is exactly what I need. It makes sense now. Thanks for the explanation!

Guy

#16

My only concern is that the UA for a webView could be different than the UA for a network.requests() (in particular since you can set the UA for network request!)

Rob

#17

Thanks Rob, 

You are correct. I eventually figured that out. I needed to send the UA from a cell phone to a remote server. Apparently IOS doesn’t send a proper UA. I eventually had to create my own UA to send by retrieving different system info and piecing them together to make a UA that the server would accept.

Guy