vacatia/varnish-mobiletranslate

Varnish Mobile Detect

Goal:

Drop-in varnish solution to mobile user detection based on the https://github.com/serbanghita/Mobile-Detect library., _(*1)

How:

A VCL script that adds a X-UA-Device header to the request., _(*2)

Requirements

Varnish 3 is a requirement. If you venture running this with Varnish 2, there is no gurantee for support. It is also helpful to know understand the basics of the VCL language and workflow. This is not a VMOD module, so no compiling is required., _(*3)

Installation

1. Download the mobile_detect.vcl file into your vcl config directory. /etc/varnish/
   • wget https://raw2.github.com/willemk/varnish-mobiletranslate/master/mobile_detect.vcl
2. Include the mobile_detect.vcl in your default.vcl file (See examples below)
3. Call devicedetect from vcl_recv in varnish (See examples below)

Usage

Sample use case: Different back ends

Using a different backend for mobile than for desktop, _(*4)

include "mobile_detect.vcl";

backend mobile {
    .host = "10.0.0.1";
    .port = "80";
}

sub vcl_recv {

    call devicedetect;

    if (req.http.X-UA-Device ~ "^mobile") {
        set req.backend = mobile;
    }
}

Sample use case: Normalize the user-agent string for the backend

The backend receives the simplified user-agent generated by the mobile_detect. The backend can then serve different content accordingly. It will then cache it by device type., _(*5)

include "mobile_detect.vcl";

sub vcl_recv {

    call devicedetect;

    if (req.http.X-UA-Device) {
        set req.http.User-Agent = req.http.X-UA-Device;
        unset req.http.X-UA-Device;
    }
}

sub vcl_hash {
    #Default Hash
    hash_data(req.url);
    if (req.http.host) {
        hash_data(req.http.host);
    } else {
        hash_data(server.ip);
    }

    #Also hash based on device type
    if (req.http.X-UA-Device) {
        hash_data(req.http.X-UA-Device);
    }

    return (hash);
}

Sample use case: Cache based on device type

If your backend generates the different content for the same URL based on device type, it should be cached accoding to that device type., _(*6)

include "mobile_detect.vcl";

sub vcl_recv {

    call devicedetect;

}

sub vcl_hash {
    #Default Hash
    hash_data(req.url);
    if (req.http.host) {
        hash_data(req.http.host);
    } else {
        hash_data(server.ip);
    }

    #Also hash based on device type
    if (req.http.X-UA-Device) {
        hash_data(req.http.X-UA-Device);
    }

    return (hash);
}

Bugs & Features

If you have any bug reports, feature request or want to submit a pull request, please use the appropriate github tools., _(*7)

Thanks

Thanks to these projects for help and inspiration, _(*8)

https://github.com/serbanghita/Mobile-Detect, _(*9)

https://github.com/varnish/varnish-devicedetect, _(*10)

Update mobile_detect.vcl

You can update the mobile detection rules using latest from serbanghita/Mobile-Detect, by executing php varnishtranslate.php. Then push the mobile_detect.vcl to the repo., _(*11)