monomi

A.K.A. MObile NOde MIddleware

monomi is middleware for node.js/Connect that provides tools for handling mobile (and other types of) browsers.

monomi detects which type of browser the client is using to access the node.js server, by providing the 'detectBrowserType' middleware. It places the type of browser (as a string) in the request.monomi.browserType property:

var Connect = require("connect"),
    monomi = require("monomi");

Connect.createServer(

    monomi.detectBrowserType(),

    function(request, response, next) {
        response.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});
        response.write('Hello World, ');
        response.end(
            'and thanks for using a ' +
            request.monomi.browserType +
            ' browser'
        );
    }

).listen(8080);

For example, if this server is accessed with an iPad, the browser type is 'tablet'; if accessed with an iPhone or Android handset, the result is 'touch'; if accessed by any other mobile device, it is 'mobile'; and it defaults to 'desktop'.

monomi is sensitive to mobile carrier transcoders that move device headers into their 'x-device-*' equivalents.

Changing groupings

Over time, and as new mobile browsers come out, monomi will continue to provide support for recognizing them. In the meantime, applications can override how they wish the recognition to work.

For instance, the browser types that can be returned (and the recognition rules used for each) can be overridden and configured by passing an options object to the function.

The options can be passed like this:

{
    'order': ['tablet', 'touch', 'mobile', 'desktop'],
    'default':'unknown',

    'tablet': {
        'user-agent': new RegExp('ipad', 'i')
    },
    
    ...
    
    'desktop': function (request, userAgent) {
        return true;
    }

}

The 'order' property tells monomi which order to run the recognitions, looking for a positive result. For example, the iPhone will match both the 'touch' and 'mobile' groups by default, but the ordering ensures that the first, 'touch', is returned.

The 'default' property specifies what string should be returned if none of the other browser types match. (However, monomi's default desktop recognition returns true, so unless you alter that algorithm, 'unknown' will never get returned.)

The remainder of the options should have names that correspond to the browser types (that were in the 'order' property). These should be functions (which return a boolean result based on some recognition algorithm or other), or an options object which looks like this:

'tablet': {
    'user-agent': new RegExp('ipad', 'i')
}

This indicates that any user-agent matching the 'ipad' regular expression will indicate that the device is a tablet.

Other headers can also be matched against regular expressions, but you must also provide an 'order' property that indicates which order to apply the regex conditions in. For example:

'mobile': {
    'order':['x-wap-profile', 'profile', 'accept', 'user-agent'],
    'x-wap-profile': new RegExp('.+'),
    'profile': new RegExp('.+'),
    'accept': new RegExp('wap', 'i'),
    'user-agent': new RegExp('^(w3c |w3c-|acs-|alav|alca|amoi...)', 'i')
}

This will look for the presence of an x-wap-profile or profile header, then, if not present, look for 'wap' in the accept header. Failing that, it will run a longer regex against the user-agent to figure out if the browser is mobile or not.