Transforming php management site onto mobile phone

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September 11th, 2006, 08:00 AM

JMorjaria

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Transforming php management site onto mobile phone

ok, I have a management site built in php and want to take some of that functionality onto a mobile phone. There is a login - then a search facility - then a results list - then a customer screen.

This is basic representation of the management site, there are lots of other bits, but this is pretty much what I want to appear. I was wondering if there was a way to see whether the user is accessing the site via a computer or a mobile device, then I can do a simple if(){ and only output the content that I want the mobile user to see.

September 11th, 2006, 09:31 AM

jabba_29

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Hi,

Of course it is possible.
This thread points to a couple of methods.

The very basic idea would be something like the following ......
Create a text file with all know mobile devices' user agent strings in it
(first 4 characters) ...

Code:

known devices sample

alav
alca
armv
au-m

Open the file and create an array,
then check the UA string.

PHP Code:


		
			
<?php

  $browserfile = 'path/to/known devices sample';

  $browsers = file($browserfile);

  # $browsers is an array already, this just tidies it up

  foreach ($browsers as $dev) { $browserlist [] = trim($dev); } 

  # set the variable first

  $is_mobi = false;

  if (in_array(strtolower(substr(trim($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']),0,4)),

  $browserlist)) { $is_mobi  = 1; }

So there you have it, if the $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] is in the list of known devices:
$is_mobi returns true. Render content accordingly.

Are you using a pre-made CMS or self developed?
Joomla has something already that you can plug-in.
Drupal will have soon

Comments on this post

JMorjaria agrees: kl, thanks ill have a play, see what I can come up with

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September 19th, 2006, 02:27 PM

andymoo

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the other options would include:

running some kind of tests against the content-accept variables to check for xhtml-mp, html, wml, chtml etc and also check the browser isn't IE or FF etc - only serve wml etc to devices which support it yet are not full blown web browsers.

you could also use the wurfl with wall4php then you would be able to show specific content for mobile devices as well as desktop, the wurlf though can be a tricky beast, can get it wrong and mess up so maybe a combination of the three suggestions would give you something much more solid than just any one part.

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