Simplest way to detect a mobile device in PHP

Question

What is the simplest way to tell if a user is using a mobile device to browse my site using PHP?

I have come across many classes that you can use but I was hoping fo

Answer 1

I wrote this script to detect a mobile browser in PHP.

The code detects a user based on the user-agent string by preg_match()ing words that are found in only mobile devices user-agent strings after hundreds of tests. It has 100% accuracy on all current mobile devices and I'm currently updating it to support more mobile devices as they come out. The code is called isMobile and is as follows:

function isMobile() {
    return preg_match("/(android|avantgo|blackberry|bolt|boost|cricket|docomo|fone|hiptop|mini|mobi|palm|phone|pie|tablet|up\.browser|up\.link|webos|wos)/i", $_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"]);
}

You can use it like this:

// Use the function
if(isMobile()){
    // Do something for only mobile users
}
else {
    // Do something for only desktop users
}

To redirect a user to your mobile site, I would do this:

// Create the function, so you can use it
function isMobile() {
    return preg_match("/(android|avantgo|blackberry|bolt|boost|cricket|docomo|fone|hiptop|mini|mobi|palm|phone|pie|tablet|up\.browser|up\.link|webos|wos)/i", $_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"]);
}
// If the user is on a mobile device, redirect them
if(isMobile()){
    header("Location: http://m.yoursite.com/");
}

Let me know if you have any questions and good luck!