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51Degrees API Documentation  4.2Newer Version 4.4

Introduction

We have also integrated our Device Detection to Varnish. This page details an overview of how you can install and use our module in your Varnish environment.

Prerequisites

Dependencies:

  • gcc
  • make
  • automake
  • autotools-dev
  • libtool
  • python
  • Varnish source

Supported versions:

  • Varnish 6.0.6 (LTS)
  • C11 or above

Supported platforms:

  • Ubuntu 16.04
  • Ubuntu 18.04

Supported architectures:

  • 64-bit

Installing

If you haven’t already, you can obtain a copy of the latest version of the API here. To install on a Linux system, run the following commands from the project's root directory.

$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure --with-config=release|test
$ make
$ sudo make install

Where --with-config [optional] sets the version of the module that you want to build. Defaults to release. To run all the test, you will need to use the test option.

If your Varnish source is not installed at the standard location (i.e. /usr/local/include/varnish), you can adjust this by setting the environment variable VARNISHSRC [optional] to point to the correct location. For example, if you have installed Varnish source via package manager, it will be located at /usr/include/varnish. Then, you will need to set VARNISHSRC to /usr/include/varnish for the installation to succeed. If you want to install the module to a location of your choice, you can also set it via VMOD_DIR [optional].

Finally run the included tests. You will need to make sure that the module is built with test option.

$ make check

Configuring the Varnish API

Before you start matching user agents, you may wish to configure the solution to use a different data set for example, or to use a certain performance profile.

Init Settings

These settings are used in the vcl_init and should only be set once.

Setting Default Description
fiftyonedegrees.start N/A Starts the 51Degrees module using the dataset path provided. All other 51Degrees init options must be set before calling this.
fiftyonedegrees.set_performance_profile DEFAULTS Set the performance profile that will be used. This will determine how the module allocate memory and manage data. NOTE: the set_performance_profile is used as a base configuration, which will set the default values for the configurable fields. Any subsequence call to set these fields will override these default values.
fiftyonedegrees.set_drift 0 Set the drift value to allow sub strings to be matched in a wider range of character positions.
fiftyonedegrees.set_difference 0 Set the difference value to allow User-Agents which are slightly different to what is expected.
fiftyonedegrees.set_allow_unmatched NO Set whether the unmatched node should be used. NO means if there are no matched results, an empty string will be returned for the required property. A default string will be returned if YES is set.
fiftyonedegrees.set_use_performance_graph YES Set whether performance optimized graph should be used
fiftyonedegrees.set_use_predictive_graph YES Set whether predictive optimized graph should be used
fiftyonedegrees.set_max_concurrency 0 Set the expected concurrent requests that will be handled
fiftyonedegrees.set_delimiter “,” Set the delimiter to separate values with
fiftyonedegrees.set_properties All properties Set the properties to initialize

Match settings

These settings are valid in vcl_rev and vcl_deliver methods, and any number can be set.

Setting Description
fiftyonedegrees.match_single Gets device properties using a User-Agent. Takes a User-Agent string and a comma separated list of properties to return.
fiftyonedegrees.match_all Gets device properties using multiple HTTP headers. Takes comma separated list of properties to return.

For full documentation, use

$ man vmod_fiftyonedegrees

New features

New features were introduced to aid users with their decisions on the match results via the meta-data properties. These features are also supported in Varnish. Further details about this data can be found in False Positive page

These meta data can be used in the same way as the properties

set req.http.X-IsMobileX = fiftyonedegrees.match_all("IsMobile,Iterations,Drift,Difference,Method,UserAgents,MatchedNodes,DeviceId");

HasValue is also supported in Varnish. Whether a property has values or not is indicated by a return of an empty string in the returned list. A message, detailing the reason will also be printed out.