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Detect Mobile Browser
===================

This plugin provides helper methods for a Ruby on Rails application to detect which requests
to the application are made from mobile clients.

In addition, there are some methods that let you find out specific agents (like an iOS or Android) device, and
some URL manipulation methods to make it easier to forward mobile clients to special mobile subdomains and vice versa.

The device detection is based on a big Regular Expression, the source of which is http://detectmobilebrowser.com/ .

There is also a simple session-based test system - it allows you to use a normal browser and force the plugin to
pretend it's detecting a mobile browser.

Example
=======

Install the plugin with
<tt>
script/plugin install git://github.com/traveliq/detect_mobile_browser.git
</tt>

and you're done. The plugin is tested with Rails 2.3.11 - it probably won't work with Rails 3.x. Contributions are welcome !

After restarting your server, you should see debugging output from the plugin in your development log on every request.

You can then ask in any Controller #mobile_device?, which is true for the configured mobile devices.
In addition, #mobile_device gives you a short name (like "android"), if the user agent matches a known, specific device class.
#oldschool_browser? is true for any mobile device which is not an iOS or Android device - usually you want different, simpler
views for those, and more sophisticated or specialised ones for the "newschools".

There are shortcut methods for the newschools:

#android?
#iphone?
#ipod?

There are also methods to switch the subdomain of the current request's URL. Say that an Android phone has requested
"www.example.com/query=waffles"
Use mobilize_url(url) to turn it into
"m.example.com/query=waffles"
And demobilize_url(url) to turn it back.

You can test the plugin even if you don't have a mobile device at hand by using the session switch.
Add to any request URL to your app the parameters mobile=true and/or oldschool=true to force recognition as a mobile device in general or an oldschool device specifically.
Use mobile/oldschool=false to force the recognition off (even if it would normally be recognized as mobile/oldschool),
and mobile/oldschool=disable to switch the whole debug hack off.

Author
======

Martin Tepper (monogreen.de)

Contact
=======

For any questions, mail to [email protected], or the Author(s).

Copyright
=========

Copyright (c) 2010 Travel IQ, released under the MIT license