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24 About Device Repository

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The device repository is a file that WebCenter Sites uses to detect mobile devices. The device repository contains the properties of devices and uniquely identifies each device based on its user agent. WebCenter Sites detects devices by matching the user agent of the device to the user agent that is specified in the device repository.

Note:

A user agent is a software agent that acts on behalf of users. The format of a user-agent string is a list of product tokens (keywords) with optional comments. Most browsers specify the following format: 

Mozilla[version] (system and browser information]) [ platform] ([platform details]) [extensions]

For example:

Mozilla/so(iPad;u;CPUOS 3.2.1 like Mac OSx;en-us)ppleWebkit/531.21.10(KHTML,like Gecko) Mobile/7B405
The two types of device repositories are:

  • devices.xml: This is the default repository included with WebCenter Sites. This repository is updated at the time of a product release and includes only popular devices. You can add more data to this repository as and when required.

  • WURFL: This is a third-party device information database from ScientiaMobile. WURFL is much more comprehensive than devices.xml, and it is updated regularly by ScientiaMobile. We recommend using WURFL to ensure you have the latest devices. A licensed copy can be obtained from ScientiaMobile. It is not included with WebCenter Sites.