Question Capture Customer User Agent

[Potish]

I have a WebSpeed application for which I need to capture the customer's http user agent such as

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)

Does WebSpeed/OE have any command that I can use to capture the correct value? I am developing on OE 11.1

 

[TomBascom]

I'm thinking that the only reasons that I can think of to think that you need to capture this information all lead down a very bad path... are you attempting to discover what browser a user is using?

 

[lee.bourne]

Take a look at this KnowledgeBase article: http://knowledgebase.progress.com/articles/Article/000034457

get-cgi("HTTP_USER_AGENT")

Another useful source of info is the webspeed workshop. There's a section down the left hand side that lists all of the available environment variables.

Regards,

Lee

 

[Potish]

I'm thinking that the only reasons that I can think of to think that you need to capture this information all lead down a very bad path... are you attempting to discover what browser a user is using?

Yes I need to know the user browser primarily for just monitoring how users are getting the site. Is there a reason this is could 'lead down a very bad path?'

 

[Potish]

Take a look at this KnowledgeBase article: http://knowledgebase.progress.com/articles/Article/000034457

get-cgi("HTTP_USER_AGENT")

Another useful source of info is the webspeed workshop. There's a section down the left hand side that lists all of the available environment variables.

Regards,

Lee

Thank you. get-cgi("HTTP_USER_AGENT") looks to be working.

 

[TomBascom]

Usually it means that you are trying to program some behavior based on what sort of browser is running.

If browser = "ie" then do_something_cool; else do_something_different;

That sort of thing is not going to end well.

If you're just tracking what browsers users appear to be using to access your site for statistical purposes then you probably aren't actively creating problem code but you should keep in mind that browsers lie about what the user agent is. (They sort of have to due to IE's long and sordid history of malfeasance.) And even if the browser itself isn't lying the user might be because the user agent is user settable.