Node Device Detection

Developer Documentation

Introduction

This project contains 51Degrees Device Detection engines that can be used with the Pipeline API.

The Pipeline is a generic web request intelligence and data processing solution with the ability to add a range of 51Degrees and/or custom plug ins (Engines)

Device detection

Device detection can be performed 'on-premise' using a local data file or via the 51Degrees cloud service. On-premise provides better performance, while cloud is easier to deploy.

Both options use the same evidence values and expose (almost all) the same properties, so can be swapped out if needed at a later date.

Packages

• fiftyone.devicedetection.cloud - A Node.js engine which retrieves engine results by consuming data from the 51Degrees cloud service. A cloud builder is also included to build a pipeline for device detection cloud engine.
• fiftyone.devicedetection.onpremise - A Node.js engine which retrieves engine results by consuming data from the 51Degrees data file. A on-premise builder is also included to build a pipeline for device detection on-premise engine.
• fiftyone.devicedetection.shared - A Node.js module which contains shared functionality to build cloud and on-premise engines.
• fiftyone.devicedetection - A Node.js pipeline builder which build pipeline for either cloud or on-premise engine based on the input.

Dependencies

For runtime dependencies, see our dependencies page. The tested versions page shows the Node versions that we currently test against. The software may run fine against other versions, but additional caution should be applied.

Data

The API can either use our cloud service to get its data or it can use a local (on-premise) copy of the data.

Cloud

You will require a resource key to use the Cloud API. You can create resource keys using our configurator, see our documentation on how to use this.

On-Premise

In order to perform device detection on-premise, you will need to use a 51Degrees data file. This repository includes a free, 'lite' file in the 'device-detection-data' sub-module that has a significantly reduced set of properties. To obtain a file with a more complete set of device properties see the 51Degrees website. If you want to use the lite file, you will need to install GitLFS:

sudo apt-get install git-lfs
git lfs install

Then, navigate to 'fiftyone.devicedetection.onpremise/device-detection-cxx/device-detection-data' and execute:

git lfs pull

Installation

Using NPM call:

npm install fiftyone.devicedetection

npm install fiftyone.devicedetection.cloud

npm install fiftyone.devicedetection.onpremise

Build from Source On-Premise

Device detection on-premise uses a native binary. (i.e. compiled from C code to target a specific platform/architecture) The NPM package contains several binaries for common platforms. However, in some cases, you'll need to build the native binaries yourself for your target platform. This section explains how to do this.

Pre-requisites

• Install Node.js.
• Install node-gyp by running.
  • npm install node-gyp --global
• Install C build tools:
  • Windows:
    • You will need either Visual Studio 2019 or the C++ Build Tools installed.
      • Minimum platform toolset version is v142
      • Minimum Windows SDK version is 10.0.18362.0
  • Linux/MacOS:
    • sudo apt-get install g++ make libatomic1
• Pull git submodules:
  • git submodule update --init --recursive

Build Steps

• Navigate to fiftyone.devicedetection.onpremise
• Rename the binding.51d to binding.gyp
• Run npm install
  • Alternatively this step can be replaced by the followings:
    • Create a folder named build.
    • Run node-gyp configure
    • Run node-gyp build
  • Platform specific:
    • Windows
      • By default this will look for Visual Studio 2019 and a minimum Windows SDK version 10.0.18362.0.
      • This can be overwritten by include --msvs_version=[VS version] and --msvs_target_platform_version=[Windows SDK Version] as part of the npm install command.
        • NOTE: This is not recommended. Also, some time the latest SDK version is selected instead, as observed in environment with multiple SDK versions installed. Thus, only install the correct Visual Studio version and the minimum required Windows SDK version as recommended.
• This will build the FiftyOneDeviceDetectionHashV4.node under build/Release folder.
• Copy the FiftyOneDeviceDetectionHashV4.node to build directory (which is one level up) and rename it using the following convention.
  • Windows:
    • FiftyOneDeviceDetectionHashV4-win32-[ Node version ].node
      • e.g. FiftyOneDeviceDetectionHashV4-win32-10.node for Node 10.
  • Linux:
    • FiftyOneDeviceDetectionHashV4-linux-[ Node version ].node
      • e.g. FiftyOneDeviceDetectionHashV4-linux-10.node for Node 10.
  • MacOS:
    • FiftyOneDeviceDetectionHashV4-darwin-[ Node version ].node
      • e.g. FiftyOneDeviceDetectionHashV4-darwin-10.node for Node 10.
  • Please see the tested versions page for Node versions that we currently test against. The software may run fine against other versions, but extra caution should be applied.
  • You can optionally clear up by removing all the build files and folders except for the *.node file that's been created.
  • WARNING: npm install removes this copied file, so you will need to do the above steps again after running npm install

Examples

For details of how to run the examples, please refer to run examples. The tables below describe the examples that are available.

Cloud

Example	Description
configurator-console	Shows how to call the cloud with the created key and how to access the values of the selected properties.
gettingstarted-console	How to use the 51Degrees Cloud service to determine details about a device based on its User-Agent and User-Agent Client Hints HTTP header values.
gettingstarted-web	How to use the 51Degrees Cloud service to determine details about a device as part of a simple web server.
metadata-console	How to access the meta-data that relates to the device detection algorithm.
nativemodellookup-console	How to get device details based on a given 'native model name' using the 51Degrees cloud service.
taclookup-console	How to get device details based on a given TAC (Type Allocation Code) using the 51Degrees cloud service.
useragentclienthints-web	This is now deprecated. Kept for testing purposes. Please see gettingstarted-web instead.

On-Premise

Example	Description
automaticupdates/dataFileSystemWatcher.js	How to configure automatic updates using the file system watcher to monitor for changes to the data file.
automaticupdates/updateOnStartUp.js	How to configure the Pipeline to automatically update the device detection data file on startup.
automaticupdates/updatePollingInterval.js	Ho to configure and verify the various automatic data file update settings.
gettingstarted-console	How to use the 51Degrees on-premise device detection API to determine details about a device based on its User-Agent and User-Agent Client Hints HTTP header values.
gettingstarted-web	How to use the 51Degrees Cloud service to determine details about a device as part of a simple web server.
matchmetrics-console	How to view metrics associated with the results of processing with a Device Detection engine.
metadata-console	How to access the meta-data that relates to the device detection algorithm.
offlineprocessing-console	How to process data for later viewing using a Device Detection Hash data file.
performance-console	How to configure the various performance options and run a simple performance test.
updatedatafile-console	This example illustrates various parameters that can be adjusted when using the on-premise device detection engine, and controls when a new data file is sought and when it is loaded by the device detection software.
useragentclienthints-web	This is now deprecated. Kept for testing purposes. Please see gettingstarted-web instead.

Device Detection

Example	Description
gettingStarted.js	Getting started example of using the 51Degrees device detection 'Hash' algorithm to determine whether a given User-Agent corresponds to a mobile device or not.

Tests

In this repository, there are tests for the examples. You will need to install jest to run them:

npm install jest --global

You will also need to install any required packages for the examples in the Examples section.

Add a 51Degrees cloud resource key in the fiftyone.devicedetection/package.json file for cloud tests. You can obtain a resource key from the 51Degrees Cloud Configurator and assign it to the environment variable RESOURCE_KEY in your test environment.

There are other environment variables that you will also need to set in your test environment before running all tests:

• TEST_SUPER_RESOURCE_KEY: This key contains all SetHeader* properties.
• TEST_PLATFORM_RESOURCE_KEY: This key contains only the SetHeaderPlatform* property but no other SetHeader properties.
• TEST_HARDWARE_RESOURCE_KEY: This key contains only the SetHeaderHardware* property but no other SetHeader properties.
• TEST_BROWSER_RESOURCE_KEY: This key contains only the SetHeaderBrowser* property but no other SetHeader properties.
• TEST_NO_SETHEADER_RESOURCE_KEY: This key contains no SetHeader properties.

To run the tests, execute the following command in the root directory or a sub-module directory:

npm test

Native code updates

Process for rebuilding SWIG interfaces following an update to the device detection cxx code (This is only intended to be run by 51Degrees developers internally):

1. Ensure Swig is installed.
   1. At the time when this README was updated, the current stable version of Swig did not support new changes in Node 12 and above.
   2. The Swig version being used is built from the following branch.
      1. https://github.com/yegorich/swig/tree/pr/new-node-fixes.
      2. There had been an active Pull Request created to merge the changes to the main Swig master branch.
      3. Once the Pull Request is completed, the consequent Swig releases should be used.
2. Update the device-detection-cxx submodule to reference the relevant commit.
3. From terminal, navigate to fiftyone.pipeline.devicedetection and run: a) swig -c++ -javascript -node hash_node.i
4. Commit changes to repository.
5. Run the 'Build Device Detection Binaries for Node.js' Azure CI Pipeline.
6. Copy the produced artifacts into the fiftyone.pipeline.devicedetection/build directory.
7. Commit changes to repository.

TypeScript

Types are generated and exported automatically from JSDoc comments using this script. Upon generation types are committed into the repository into the package's types directory. Calling the generation step is manual for now, but later will be added as part of CI/CD pipeline.

The TypeScript example with typechecking enabled is available under onpremise/gettingstarted-console/gettingStarted.ts.

The example can be run as:

npx ts-node gettingStarted.ts