I’ve been fiddling around with host headers recently to identify the type of device being used to access my sites, and in some cases redirect to a more suitable delivery format. (Try visiting www.news0r.com using a PSP -you will be automatically redirected to the PSP-friendly site).

It was while putting in some detection for the new web’n'walk site that I started looking more specifically into what information is available through mobile device user agent details. I-mode handsets are interesting in that not only do they report what device they are, they also report how much memory they have, allowing me to dynamically adjust how many news stories are delivered to the handset, as well as letting me chop up stories into multiple pages handled by my CMS for devices that only have limited memory.

Through judicious searching (I was looking for the headers for the MDA Pro and the Nokia N70) I came across WURFL, the Wireless Universal Resource File.

So… What is WURFL?
The WURFL is an XML configuration file which contains information about capabilities and features of several wireless devices.

This is very similar to Nokia’s UAProf, but covers far more than just Nokia devices, making it far more useful.

Coming complete with implementation libraries in a variety of languages, WURFL marries generic information delivered via a device’s browser host header with collected, useful information about the device itself, including memory sizes, screen sizes, supported services and so on. So you can quickly and easily mofidy delivered content to suit the device you are dealing with.

Technorati Tags: PSP, Wireless, Mobile, news0r, i-mode, T-Mobile, Games, WURFL, UAProf, Nokia