Mobile device detection in Nginx with just 7 lines of configuration

gistfile1.txt

### Testing if the client is a mobile or a desktop.
### The selection is based on the usual UA strings for desktop browsers.

## Testing a user agent using a method that reverts the logic of the
## UA detection. Inspired by notnotmobile.appspot.com.
map $http_user_agent $is_desktop {
    default 0;
    ~*linux.*android|windows\s+(?:ce|phone) 0; # exceptions to the rule
    ~*spider|crawl|slurp|bot 1; # bots
    ~*windows|linux|os\s+x\s*[\d\._]+|solaris|bsd 1; # OSes
}

## Revert the logic.
map $is_desktop $is_mobile {
    1 0;
    0 1;
}

I've updated the directive to support IE9 on Windows Phone.

Added the bot detection.

The following is a reference to an open (but not open source) solution provided by my company to detect mobile devices (or any kind of HTTP client in fact) through NGINX.

http://www.scientiamobile.com/blog/post/view/id/25/title/HTTP-and-Mobile%3A-The-Missing-Header-

I figured that companies looking for a professionally supported solution in this space may want to know about it.

Thanks

Luca

Thanks!

Would you please give an usage example?

Yes, usage example would be really helpfull

I'm intrested in an usage example too!

Here's how I use it (to redirect mobile traffic to an m.domain.com site):

set $mobile_rewrite do_not_perform;

if ($is_mobile) {
    set $mobile_rewrite perform;
}

if ($mobile_rewrite = perform) {
    rewrite ^ http://m.domain.com$request_uri? redirect;
    break;
}

Would be awesome though if there was a way to separate mobile from tablet from desktop.

Its a pretty old post but in case someone want to detect tablet and mobile separately here is my code

map $http_user_agent $ua_device {
	default 'desktop';
	~*(android|bb\d+|meego).+mobile|avantgo|bada\/|blackberry|blazer|compal|elaine|fennec|hiptop|iemobile|ip(hone|od)|iris|kindle|lge\ |maemo|midp|mmp|mobile.+firefox|netfront|opera\ m(ob|in)i|palm(\ os)?|phone|p(ixi|re)\/|plucker|pocket|psp|series(4|6)0|symbian|treo|up\.(browser|link)|vodafone|wap|windows\ ce|xda|xiino/i 'mobile';
	~*android|ipad|playbook|silk/i 'tablet';
}

add_header x-ua-device $ua_device;

How to block requests from rest clients , I tried this but still I'm not able to block Postman requests ?
map $http_user_agent $is_browser {
~*(MSIE|Firefox|Safari|Opera) 0;
~*spider|crawl|slurp|bot 1; # bots
default 1;
}

I think you've reversed the logic, default should be 0 and in case you detect a browser (MSIE, Firefox, etc.) you want 1.