bowser

What is bowser?

The bowser npm package is a browser detection library. It helps in identifying the browser and rendering engine a user is using, as well as providing information about the browser's capabilities, such as whether it supports touch events or service workers. This can be particularly useful for tailoring user experiences to different environments or for analytics and debugging purposes.

What are bowser's main functionalities?

Browser Detection

Detects the browser name using the user agent string.

const Bowser = require('bowser');
const browser = Bowser.getParser(window.navigator.userAgent);
const browserName = browser.getBrowserName();

Browser Version Detection

Determines the version of the browser being used.

const Bowser = require('bowser');
const browser = Bowser.getParser(window.navigator.userAgent);
const browserVersion = browser.getBrowserVersion();

Platform Detection

Identifies the platform (desktop, mobile, tablet, etc.) on which the browser is running.

const Bowser = require('bowser');
const browser = Bowser.getParser(window.navigator.userAgent);
const platformType = browser.getPlatformType();

Feature Checks

Checks if the browser supports certain features, such as touch events.

const Bowser = require('bowser');
const browser = Bowser.getParser(window.navigator.userAgent);
const supportsTouch = browser.satisfies({
  'mobile': { 'touch': true }
});

OS Detection

Determines the operating system on which the browser is running.

const Bowser = require('bowser');
const browser = Bowser.getParser(window.navigator.userAgent);
const osName = browser.getOSName();

Other packages similar to bowser

useragent

The 'useragent' package is similar to 'bowser' in that it parses user agent strings to detect browser information. However, it focuses more on the parsing aspect and less on the browser's capabilities.

platform

The 'platform' package provides information about the operating system, browser, and device based on the user agent string. It is similar to 'bowser' but has a simpler API and less detailed detection of browser features.

detect-browser

The 'detect-browser' package is another alternative for detecting browser information from the user agent string. It is a smaller and more lightweight library compared to 'bowser', but it may not offer as comprehensive feature detection.

README

Bowser

A browser detector. Because sometimes, there is no other way, and not even good modern browsers always provide good feature detection mechanisms.

Contents

• Overview
• Use cases
• Advanced usage
• How can I help?

Overview

The library is made to help to detect what browser your user has and gives you a convenient API to filter the users somehow depending on their browsers.

Please, note that this is an alpha version. Check out the 1.x branch for a stable version.

Changes of version 2.0 The upcoming 2.0 version has drastically changed API. All available methods can be found in the docs folder from now on and on a webpage soon.

Use cases

First of all, require the library. This is a UMD Module, so it will work for AMD, Typescript and CommonJS module systems.

const Bowser = require("bowser"); // CommonJS

import * as Bowser from "bowser" // Typescript

By default, the exported version is the ES5 transpiled version, which do not include any polyfills.

In case you don't use your own babel-polyfill you may need to have pre-built bundle with all needed polyfills. So, for you it's suitable to require bowser like this: require('bowser/bundled'). As the result, you get a ES5 version of bowser with babel-polyfill bundled together.

You may need to use the source files, so they will be available in the package as well.

Browser props detection

Often we need to pick users' browser properties such as the name, the version, the rendering engine and so on. Here is an example how to do it with Bowser:

const browser = bowser.getParser(window.navigator.userAgent);

console.log(`The current browser name is "${browser.getBrowserName()}"`);
// The current browser name is "Internet Explorer"

or

const impression = new Impression();

const browser = bowser.getParser(window.navigator.userAgent);
const browserInfo = browser.getBrowser();
impression.brName = browserInfo.name;
impression.brVer = browserInfo.version;

or

const browser = bowser.getParser(window.navigator.userAgent);
impression.userTechData = browser.parse();
console.log(impression.userTechData);

// outputs
{
  browser: {
    name: "Internet Explorer"
    version: "11.0"
  },
  os: {
    name: "Windows"
    version: "NT 6.3"
    versionName: "8.1"
  },
  platform: {
    type: "desktop"
  },
  engine: {
    name: "Trident"
    version: "7.0"
  }
}

Filtering browsers

You could want to filter some particular browsers to provide any special support for them or make any workarounds. It could look like this:

const browser = bowser.getParser(window.navigator.userAgent);
const isValidBrowser = browser.satisfies({
  // declare browsers per OS
  windows: {
    "internet explorer": ">10",
  },
  macos: {
    safari: ">10.1"
  },

  // per platform (mobile, desktop or tablet)
  mobile: {
    safari: '>=9',
    'android browser': '>3.10'
  },

  // or in general
  chrome: "~20.1.1432",
  firefox: ">31",
  opera: ">=22"

  // also supports equality operator
  chrome: "=20.1.1432", // will match particular build only

  // and loose-equality operator
  chrome: "~20"         // will match any 20.* sub-version
  chrome: "~20.1"       // will match any 20.1.* sub-version (20.1.19 as well as 20.1.12.42-alpha.1)
});

Settings for any particular OS or platform has more priority and redefines settings of standalone browsers. Thus, you can define OS or platform specific rules and they will have more priority in the end.

More of API and possibilities you will find in the docs folder.

Contributing

We're always open to pull requests or code reviews. Everyone can become a permanent contributor. Just ping @lancedikson in the issues or on Twitter ❤️

If you'd like to contribute a change to bowser, modify the files in src/, then run the following (you'll need node + npm installed):

$ npm install
$ npm run build #build
$ npm test #run tests
$ npm run lint #check lint rules

Adding tests

See the list in test/acceptance/useragentstrings.yml with example user agents and their expected bowser object.

Whenever you add support for new browsers or notice a bug / mismatch, please update the list and check if all tests are still passing.

Similar Projects

• Kong - A C# port of Bowser.

License

Licensed as MIT. All rights not explicitly granted in the MIT license are reserved. See the included LICENSE file for more details.

Changelog

2.0.0 (January 19, 2019)

• [ADD] Support a non strict equality in Parser.satisfies() (#275)
• [ADD] Add Android versions names (#276)
• [ADD] Add a typings file (#277)
• [ADD] Added support for Googlebot recognition (#278)
• [FIX] Update building tools, avoid security issues