DeviceAtlas Cloud Client API

# DeviceAtlas Cloud Client API # DeviceAtlas Cloud is a web service that can return device information such as screen width, screen height, is mobile, vendor, model etc. To see a full list of properties, please visit https://deviceatlas.com/resources/available-properties . This Client API provides an easy way to query DeviceAtlas Cloud. It provides the ability to cache returned data locally to greatly improve performance and has automatic failover should one of the global DeviceAtlas Cloud endpoints become unavailable. As of version 1.2, the Client API is able to leverage data collected by the DeviceAtlas Client Side Component. This data is sent to DeviceAtlas Cloud to augment the data found from the normal HTTP headers and also allows the detection of the various iPhone and iPad models. ### Dependencies ### This library does not depend on any third party libraries. ### Configuration ### The DeviceAtlas Cloud Client API is configured by setter methods at runtime. The only required setting is your DeviceAtlas licence key. #### Basic Usage #### The DeviceAtlas Cloud Client API can be used as follows: * Import. ```csharp import mobi.mtld.da.device.DeviceApi; ``` * Get an instance of the API (singleton), set your DeviceAtlas licence key and get the properties. In a servlet container: ```csharp // must be inside a try catch block try { /* get the API instance (singleton) */ Client client = Client.GetInstance(); /* set your licence key */ client.SetLicenceKey(licenceKey); /* get the device properties - by request object */ Hashtable result = client.GetDeviceData(request); Hashtable properties = (Hashtable)results[Client.KEY_PROPERTIES]; } catch (Exception ex) { // handle the errors... } ``` Detecting based on a set of HTTP headers: ```csharp Dictionary<string, string> headers = new Dictionary<string, string>(); headers.Add("user-agent", "THE USER AGENT ..."); // add more headers ... // must be inside a try catch block try { /* get the API instance (singleton) */ Client client = Client.GetInstance(); /* set your licence key */ client.SetLicenceKey(licenceKey); /* get device properties - by passing HTTP headers */ Hashtable result = client.GetDeviceDataByHeaders(headers); Hashtable properties = (Hashtable)results[Client.KEY_PROPERTIES]; } catch (Exception ex) { // handle the errors... } ``` Detecting based on a user agent string: ```csharp string userAgent = "THE USER AGENT ..."; // must be inside a try catch block try { /* get the API instance (singleton) */ Client client = Client.GetInstance(); /* set your licence key */ client.SetLicenceKey(licenceKey); /* get device properties - by passing a user agent string */ Hashtable result = client.GetDeviceDataByUserAgent(userAgent); Hashtable properties = (Hashtable)results[Client.KEY_PROPERTIES]; } catch (Exception ex) { // handle the errors... } ``` * Use the device properties: ```csharp if (properties.ContainsKey("mobileDevice") && properties["mobileDevice"]) { // example 1: Get the screen width for image optimization int displayWidth = properties.ContainsKey("displayWidth")? properties["displayWidth"]: 100; // example 2: Get the device vendor name string vendor = properties.ContainsKey("vendor")? properties["vendor"]: ""; // example 3: Touch screen optimization bool useBiggerIcons = properties.ContainsKey("touchScreen")? properties["touchScreen"]: false; // example 4: Send Geo Location JS to client? bool supportsGeoLocation = properties.ContainsKey("js.geoLocation")? properties["js.geoLocation"]: false; } ``` See the list of all property names here: https://deviceatlas.com/resources/available-properties The availability of a property depends on the device and your licence, before accessing a property always check if it exists in the set or not. #### Proxy #### The following code example shows how to set a WebProxy instance to the API. ```csharp // must be inside a try catch block try { /* get the API instance (singleton) */ Client client = Client.GetInstance(); /* set your licence key */ client.SetLicenceKey(licenceKey); /* set your WebProxy instance */ client.SetProxy(proxy); ... } catch (Exception ex) { // handle the errors... } ``` ### Examples ### Various examples are included in this package to clearly demonstrate the API features, usage and some use cases. These examples are very simple and are heavily commented. #### Basic Usage #### Includes two examples. One simple command line example which uses the API to detect and get properties from header sets. The other example is a web application to be used in a servlet container. This example uses the API with the request object to automatically detect and get the properties for the request. Using custom API configs and the client-side-component is shown in this example. #### Redirection #### This web example uses the API to get properties for the current request and then uses some basic property values to decide which website provides the most suitable content for the device making the request. #### Content Adaptation #### This web example uses the API to get properties for the device making the current request and then uses some basic property values to choose a suitable template to wrap around the content. #### Analytics #### This web example uses the API to get properties for user-agents from a given list. Some properties such as vendor, browser name and device type are aggregated and the results are displayed as graphs and numbers. #### Content Targeting #### This example uses the API to detect the device and use some of its properties to show certain advertisements and download links which may be related or of interest to the user, considering his/her device. Note that in the web examples which use the API, the client side properties are taken into account automatically by the API if the cookie exists on the browser. This means if the cookie already exists within your browser you will still see the client side properties in the result even when the DeviceAtlas client side component is not added to the page. You can delete the cookie manually to see the differences between the results from examples which use the client side component and those that don't. ### Caching ### The API can cache the returned data after a call to the DeviceAtlas Cloud service, this will speed up subsequent requests. The API uses the built in .NET cache as much as possible. The .NET cache in versions before .NET 4 is memory based and gets cleared each time the application is restarted. To help with this the DeviceAtlas Cloud Client can also cache data in files to backup the memory cache. The file cache stores the returned properties on your server disk. The cache location is typically the system temp directory but this can be overridden with the settings. Items in the cache expire after a set time period to ensure the data is up-to-date. This cache is enabled by default. It is recommended to always have file caching enabled. ### Client Side Component ### In addition to the properties from the user-agent detection, properties can be gathered from the client's browser and used both on the client side and on the server side. Please see the [ClientSide readme file](README.ClientSide.html) for more information. #### Usage with Client Side Component #### In addition to normal usage, DeviceAtlas has the capability to capture client side properties and merge them into the server side properties. The "deviceatlas.min.js" file must be included on your webpage in order for it to detect the client side properties. The contents of this cookie are automatically detected with the request headers. Both sets of properties are used in additional logic to determine other properties such iPhone and iPad models which are normally not detectable. By default, if the cookie exists it will be used by the API. To disable using the client side cookie: ```csharp client.SetUseClientCookie(false); ``` ### DeviceAtlas Cloud Service End-points ### The DeviceAtlas Cloud Service is powered by independent clusters of servers spread around the world. This ensures optimum speed and reliability. The API is able to automatically switch to a different end-point if the current end-point becomes unavailable. It can also (optionally) auto-rank all of the service end-points to choose the end-point with the lowest latency for your location. Cloud service provider servers are defined as an array of "Server" objects. Class "Server" exists in the "mobi.mtld.deviceatlas.cloud" package. A default Server array is built in the API but you can manually set: ```csharp Server[] servers = { new Server("SERVER-HOST-ADDRESS", SERVER-PORT), new Server("SERVER-HOST-ADDRESS", SERVER-PORT) }; client = Client.GetInstance(); client.SetServers(servers); ``` By default the API will analyze the end-points from time to time to rank them by their stability and response speed. The ranked list is then cached and used whenever the Client API needs to query the DeviceAtlas Cloud Service. If an end- point fails, the Client API will automatically switch to the next end-point on the list. There is no need to set the servers array if auto-ranking is turned on. If you wish, you may re-order the array and turn auto-ranking off. In this case the API will respect your preferred order of end-points and only switch to a different end-point should the primary one fail to resolve. #### Notes #### * With the default auto-ranking settings, the ranking is done every 24 hours. The actual time may be more than 24 hours as the ranking is only triggered by a request to the Client API and the cached server list is older than value set by client.SetAutoServerRankListLifetime(1440). * During end-point analysis a number of requests are made to each end-point. Please note that these requests count towards your total hits to the Cloud service. e.g: ```csharp if Server list contains 3 servers AUTO SERVER RANKING LIFETIME = 1440 AUTO SERVER RANKING NUM REQUESTS = 3 then auto ranking will add 9 (3x3) hits per day ``` #### Methods #### * Get the ranked server list: ```csharp Server[] rankedServerList = client.GetServers(); ``` The first end-point in the list will be used to make a request to the cloud, if it fails the next end-point will be take it's place. * Get the end-point used for the last request: ```csharp Server server = client.GetCloudUrl(); ``` Note that if the data comes from cache this method will return "null". * Get end-point info. This is useful when you want to manually rank the server list: ```csharp Server[] server = client.GetServersLatencies(); ``` Please see https://deviceatlas.com/resources/cloud-service-end-points for more information. #### Cloud Server end-point settings #### ##### client.SetAutoServerRanking(true) ##### To turn auto ranking on/off. To manually rank the servers set to "false" and edit the SERVERS list to set your preferred order of end-points. The API will not rank the servers and will use the SERVERS list items directly with the topmost server used first to get device data. On fail- over the next end-point in the list will be used. ##### client.SetCloudServiceTimeout(2) ##### Time in seconds. If an end-point fails to respond in this amount of time the API will fail-over to the next end-point on the list. ##### client.SetAutoServerRankingMaxFailures(1) ##### When auto ranking servers, if a server fails more than this number of times it will not be included in the list. ##### client.SetAutoServerRankingNumRequests(3) ##### When auto ranking servers, number of requests to perform for service speed calculation. ##### client.SetAutoServerRankListLifetime(1440) ##### Time in minutes. How often to auto rank servers. 0 = servers will be ranked and cached only once and this list will not be updated automatically. You can update this list manually: DeviceAtlasCloudClient.RankServers(); Note: AUTO SERVER RANKING must be set to true so this cached server list will be used by the API even if AUTO SERVER RANKING LIFETIME is set to 0 Note: If AUTO SERVER RANKING = false then the cached server list will be totally ignored. ##### client.SetServerPhaseOutLifetime(1440) ##### Used when auto ranking is OFF. Specifies how long to use the fail-over endpoints before the preferred end-point is re-checked. If the preferred end-point is available it will be added back into the list of end-points and used for future requests. ### Extra Tools ### This package comes with extra tools that can help you enhance your mobile websites. #### DeviceAtlas Client Side Component #### This is the DeviceAtlas Client Side component which discovers device info on client side to augment the server data. This library is used in the DeviceAtlas Cloud Client API examples. #### Latency Checker #### There are two command line tools included in this package to help you tweak the DeviceAtlas Cloud API end-point selecting. ##### Check Server Latency ##### This tool can be used to get info about the DeviceAtlas Cloud Service end-points. The info shown can be used for manually setting up the DeviceAtlas Clous service end-points in the API. To access the cloud servers a valid DeviceAtlas licence would be required. Usage (command line): ```csharp \path\to\ExtraTools\LatencyChecker\CheckServerLatency.exe LICENCE-KEY ``` ##### Update Server Ranking Cache ##### When AUTO_RANKING is set ON you can use this tool to re rank the DeviceAtlas Cloud end-points. All you need to do is to run this script in regular intervals which are smaller than the "AUTO_SERVER_RANKING_LIFETIME". Usage (command line): ```csharp \path\to\ExtraTools\LatencyChecker\UpdateServerRankingCache.exe LICENCE-KEY ``` - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - _ Copyright (c) DeviceAtlas Limited 2021. All Rights Reserved. _  <div class="btn-group" id="main-menu" style="float:right"><a class="btn dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown" href="#">Menu<span class="caret"></span></a><ul class="dropdown-menu"><li><a href="README.html">Main</a></li><li class="disabled"><a href="README.CloudApi.html">Cloud Client API</a></li><li><a href="README.ClientSide.html">Client-side Component</a></li><li class="divider"></li><li><a href="ApiDocs/index.html">Cloud Client API Docs</a></li></ul></div>