The WURFL Cloud Service by ScientiaMobile, Inc., is a cloud-based mobile device detection service that can quickly and accurately detect over 500 capabilities of visiting devices. It can differentiate between portable mobile devices, desktop devices, SmartTVs and any other types of devices that have a web browser.

This is the .NET Client for accessing the WURFL Cloud Service, and it requires a free or paid WURFL Cloud account from ScientiaMobile: http://www.scientiamobile.com/cloud

• .NET 2.0+
• Newtonsoft.Json 4.5

First, you must go to http://www.scientiamobile.com/cloud and signup for a free or paid WURFL Cloud account (see above). When you've finished creating your account, you must copy your API Key, as it will be needed in the Client.

You can get ScientiaMobile WURFL Cloud Client assembly in two ways:

• by cloning this Github repo and building the ScientiaMobile.WurflCloud project from the master branch
• by installing it as a NuGet package. You can get the NuGet Package from:
  • nuget.org (https://www.nuget.org/packages/Wurfl_Official_Cloud_API/)
  • ScientiaMobile nuget server, setting up a new Package Source in Visual Studio pointing to https://nuget.scientiamobile.com/repository/wurfl-cloud/

In all cases you need to reference in your project the ScientiaMobile.WurflCloud.dll assembly along with the third party Newtonsoft.Json.dll

Here's a quick example of how to get WurflCloud up and running in a Console Application.

In your Console Application project, add ScientiaMobile.WurflCloud.dll Newtonsoft.Json.dll assemblies as reference.

Add a new class to named SimpleConsoleApplication to your project with the following code.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using ScientiaMobile.WurflCloud;
using ScientiaMobile.WurflCloud.Config;
using ScientiaMobile.WurflCloud.Cache;
using ScientiaMobile.WurflCloud.Device;

namespace YourNameSpace
{
  class SimpleConsoleApplication
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      // The User-Agent to detect
      var ua = "Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9800; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.466 Mobile Safari/534.8+";
      
      // The WurflCloud configuration
      var config = new DefaultCloudClientConfig
      {
        // Your API Key
        ApiKey = "xxxxxx:yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy"
      };
      
      // Configure CloudClientManager with no cache
      var cache = new NoWurflCloudCache();
      
      var manager = new CloudClientManager(config, cache);
      
      // Get all static capability provided by your license
      var capabilities = new string[0];
      
      // Perform device detection using provided User-Agent
      DeviceInfo di = manager.GetDeviceInfo(ua, capabilities);
      
      // Write the detected Device Id
      Console.WriteLine(di.Id);
      
      // Write static capabilities name/value
      foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> entry in di.Capabilities)
      {
        Console.WriteLine(entry.Key + " " + entry.Value);
      }
      
      Console.ReadKey();
    }
  }
}

You should review the included example (CloudDemo) to get a feel for the Client API, and how best to use it in your web application.

Here's a quick example of how to get up and running quickly:

In CloudDemo\Services\Home\WurflService.cs set your personal ApiKey both in GetDataByRequest and GetDataByAgent methods.

GetDataByRequest is an example on how to get capabilities starting from the HttpRequest.

public DeviceInfoViewModel GetDataByRequest(HttpContext context)
{
  var config = new DefaultCloudClientConfig
  {
     ApiKey = "xxxxxx:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
  };
  var manager = new CloudClientManager(config);
  var info = manager.GetDeviceInfo(context, new[] { "is_wireless_device", "model_name" });
  var model = new DeviceInfoViewModel
  {
     DeviceId = info.Id,
     ServerVersion = info.ServerVersion,
     DateOfRequest = info.WurflLastUpdate.ToString(),
     Library = manager.GetClientVersion(),
     Capabilities = info.Capabilities,
     Errors = info.Errors,
     Source = info.ResponseOrigin
  };
  return model;
}

GetDataByAgent is an example on how to get capabilities starting from a User-Agent string

public DeviceInfoViewModel GetDataByAgent(HttpContextBase context, String ua)
{
  var config = new DefaultCloudClientConfig
  {
  	 ApiKey = "xxxxxx:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
  };
  
  var manager = new CloudClientManager(config).SetCache(new MemoryWurflCloudCache());
  
  // Grab data
  var info = manager.GetDeviceInfo(ua, new[] { "is_wireless_device", "is_smartphone", "physical_screen_width" });
  var model = new DeviceInfoViewModel
  {
     DeviceId = info.Id,
     UserAgent = ua,
     ServerVersion = info.ServerVersion,
     DateOfRequest = info.WurflLastUpdate.ToLongTimeString(),
     Library = manager.GetClientVersion(),
     Capabilities = info.Capabilities,
     Errors = info.Errors,
     Source = info.ResponseOrigin
  };
  return model;
}

The CloudDemo\ViewModels\DeviceInfoViewModel is a helper class that gathers information from the WURFL cloud client API and makes it ready for display.

You can directly check a capability as below:

var isMobileAsText = info.Get("is_wireless_device"); // Returns a string!

The public interface of the WURFL Cloud API is fairly simple and consists of a single class, Client\WurflCloud\CloudClientManager. The members of this class are:

• GetApiVersion: Gets a string with the version number of the WURFL cloud server API.
• GetCachingModuleName: Gets a string with the fully qualified name of the .NET class that the WURFL cloud ASP.NET API uses to cache server responses.
• GetClientVersion: Gets a string with the version number of the WURFL cloud ASP.NET client API.
• GetDeviceInfo: Returns the values of the capabilities available for the requesting device or user-agent string.
• SetCache: Allows replacing the default cache module that the ASP.NET client API will use to improve performance.

Before you can start using the Client\WurflCloud\CloudClientManager, you should initialize it by providing a valid API key and optionally a caching module. This information is collected in an instance of the Client\WurflCloud\Config\CloudClientConfig class. The library offers a default configuration object through the Client\WurflCloud\DefaultCloudClientConfig class. Most of the time, all you need to do is getting a new instance of this class and set your API key, as shown below:

var config = new DefaultCloudClientConfig
  {
    ApiKey = "123456:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
  };
var manager = new CloudClientManager(config);

The public members of the CloudClientConfig class are:

• ApiKey: Gets and sets the API key that identifies your developer account
• Compression: Indicates whether GZIP compression is required from cloud server. Compression is disabled by default.

The ASP.NET cloud API sits in between your ASP.NET application and the WURFL cloud. It tracks all of your requests and caches frequently requested devices. The library provides full control over the caching infrastructure. Caching modules available:

• Client/WurflCloud/Cache/CookieWurflCloudCache: Uses a cookie to store the value of returned capabilities.
• Client/WurflCloud/Cache/MemoryWurflCloudCache: Server responses are cached in the ASP.NET Cache object. The cached data has no dependencies and expires automatically if not used for 20 minutes.
• Client/WurflCloud/Cache/NoWurflCloudCache: No caching layer is used and every request to the ASP.NET WURFLcloud client results in a request to the server cloud. The cache API has been designed to be pluggable. A valid cache module is any class that implements the Client\WurflCloud\Cache\IWurflCloudCache interface. For your convenience, the API also provides a half-done cache provider class—the Client\WurflCloud\Cache\WurflCloudCacheBase. The simplest and quickest way to create a custom cache module is deriving a new class from Client\WurflCloud\Cache\WurflCloudCacheBase. The class CloudDemo\Common\FlexibleMemoryWurflCloudCache provides an example that binds the response for any requested user agent string to a helper cache entry. By invalidating the helper cache entry, you can clear all cached data in a single shot.

To query the WURFL database in the cloud, you use the GetDeviceInfo method on the Client\WurflCloud\CloudClientManager class. The method has a few overloads:

public DeviceInfo GetDeviceInfo(IServiceProvider context)
public DeviceInfo GetDeviceInfo(IServiceProvider context, String[] capabilities)
public DeviceInfo GetDeviceInfo(WurflCloudRequest request)
public DeviceInfo GetDeviceInfo(WurflCloudRequest request, String[] capabilities)

All methods return a Client\WurflCloud\Device\DeviceInfo object, whose public properties are:

• Capabilities: Name/value dictionary of capabilities as returned by the server.
• Errors: Name/value dictionary of errors as returned by the server.
• Get: Method that takes a capability name and returns the corresponding value as a string.
• Id: ID of the device corresponding to the user agent string as identified by the WURFL server engine.
• ResponseOrigin: Indicates the source of the response. Possible values come from the Client\WurflCloud\Http\ResponseType enumeration: None, Cloud, Cache.
• ServerVersion: Version of the WURFL server API.
• WurflLastUpdate: Date the WURFL database was last updated on the server.

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NOTICE: All information contained herein is, and remains the property of ScientiaMobile Incorporated and its suppliers, if any. The intellectual and technical concepts contained herein are proprietary to ScientiaMobile Incorporated and its suppliers and may be covered by U.S. and Foreign Patents, patents in process, and are protected by trade secret or copyright law. Dissemination of this information or reproduction of this material is strictly forbidden unless prior written permission is obtained from ScientiaMobile Incorporated.