Christer, I'm actually in the process of finishing up just such a component for my job. (Can't share it, unfortunately--it contains some proprietary knowledge.)
Some thoughts: - Call it Zend_Device. - Identifying specific mobile devices is more important than identifying specific standard browsers. - Rely on multiple data sources, not just one. - Return device capabilities in addition to identifying the device (maybe you'd want this to be an eventual goal, but plan for it). - If you're returning device capabilities, you'll want some form of local caching/storage. Figure that into the proposal. - Integrate it into the ContextSwitch view helper. Good luck! -Matt On Wed, January 30, 2008 11:26 am, Christer Edvartsen wrote: > I have created a page in the wiki that will hold the proposal for a > Zend_UserAgent component. The proposal does not hold that much > information yet, but I will add some more as soon as I get some feedback > from you guys. It's located at > http://framework.zend.com/wiki/display/ZFPROP/Zend_UserAgent+-+Christer+Edvartsen > > The component is supposed to be used to classify user agents into some > predefined categories. I suggest the following categories: > > * Browser > * RSS Reader > * Mobile Device > * Robot > > A Zend_Controller_Action helper could also be made by using this > component but I guess something like this could live outside of a > typical MVC application so I suggest it as a separate component. > > There are several user agent databases out there, and the one I was > thinking about using is http://www.user-agents.org/ which has an > extensive list of user agent strings. One problem is that the database > does not have the "Mobile device" category. The list is huge though > (2500+ user agents) and I don't think it would be necessary to use > _every_ user agent string in that database. > > Does anyone have any ideas of how to decide of what list we could use > for something like this? The component will be made in such a manner > that developers can add their own list/database if they think the one we > provide is not sufficient. > > The component could also be extended to fetch some more detalied > information about mobile devices using WURFL > (http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/). > > Any comments? > > > -- > Christer Edvartsen > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://cogo.wordpress.com/ >
