Web Development: Using WURFL to identify the Clients’s device

Sometimes in web-development, it is needed to identify the connecting device, if it is a mobile phone, a tablet or a normal desktop browser.

This is possible by inspecting the HTTP_USER_AGENT parameter -part of the HTTP header- which has some information about the client’s browser, connecting device and operating system.

Anyway; the HTTP_USER_AGENT parameter is a mess, there are no specifications about how the browser should formulate the HTTP_USER_AGENT string and you can never tell from the string signature the supported features on the connecting device. Sometimes it is needed to know if  the connecting device support HTML5 and J2ME? , does this device have a QWERTY keyboard …etc.

Read more »