Android Generic User Agent (UA)

Question

I am building an Android app to display content feed from a server. The server is a mobile website (like http://m.google.com) which tracks the traffic from various mobile cl

Answer 1

You can totally do that and at developer.android.com suggest it as well, when they talk about the WebView, especially if you want to build a web app for your web view. Reference here: http://developer.android.com/guide/webapps/webview.html

Id suggest not only to keep reference to the application in your User Agent but to also keep track of the version as well.

Anyways, I was looking to change my UA too and the discussions here and the encouraged me to do so as well.

Here is my implementation:

On your Android APP:

String versionName="";
int versionCode=0;
try {
    versionName = getBaseContext().getPackageManager().getPackageInfo(getBaseContext().getPackageName(), 0 ).versionName;
    versionCode = getBaseContext().getPackageManager().getPackageInfo(getBaseContext().getPackageName(), 0 ).versionCode;
} catch (NameNotFoundException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

If you want to auto increment the build number aka. versionCode you may take a look to this other Stack Overflow post as well, the C# solution.

Afterwards you just change the User Agent.

WebView mywebview = (WebView)findViewById(R.id.webView);
String myUserAgent = " MyFancyAPPName  V."+versionName+"."+versionCode;

mywebview.getSettings().setUserAgentString(mywebview.getSettings().getUserAgentString()+myUserAgent);

On your Web Application: In PHP

Or In JavaScript

var ua = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
var isAndroid = ua.indexOf("MyFancyAPPName") > -1;
if(isAndroid) { 
    //do whatever you wish here
}

Or you can directly detect it from the .htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*MyFancyAPPName.*$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.MyWebSite/MyFancyAPPName [R=301]