As you know, Internet traffic has risen exponentially over the past decade, and this trend shows no sign of stopping. In addition, the bulk of Internet traffic now comes from mobile devices. The mobile boom presents new obstacles and challenges for content management. How will content adapt to different devices with different capabilities? How can your grandma’s gnarly tablet and your cousin’s awesome new smart phone request the same information from your portal?
The Device API detects the capabilities of any device making a request to your portal. It can also determine what mobile device or operating system was used to make a request, and then follows rules to make Liferay DXP render pages based on the device. To use these features, you must first install a device detection database that can detect which mobile devices are accessing the portal. Liferay DXP provides such a database in the Liferay Mobile Device Detection (LMDD) app from the Liferay Marketplace. Click here for instructions on using Liferay Marketplace to find and install apps.
You can create your own plugin that makes use of the device database. This tutorial shows you some of the methods in the Device API that you can use to retrieve device attributes and capabilities. Now go ahead and get started!
Getting Started with the Device API
One important thing that you’ll want to get using the Device API is the
Device
object. You can obtain it from the themeDisplay
object like this:
Device device = themeDisplay.getDevice();
You can view the
Device
API.
Using some of the methods from the Javadocs, here’s an example that obtains a
device’s dimensions:
Dimensions dimensions = device.getScreenSize();
float height = dimensions.getHeight();
float width = dimensions.getWidth();
Now your code can get the Device
object and the dimensions of a device.
Of course, this is just a simple example. You can acquire many other device
attributes that help you take care of the pesky problems that arise when sending
content to different devices. Refer to the Device Javadocs mentioned above for
assistance. Next, you’ll learn about retrieving some other device capabilities.
Getting Device Properties
With the Device API, you can detect the properties of a device making a
request to your portal and then render content accordingly. Properties refer
to things that the requesting device can do. For example, you can determine the
device’s operating system, browser, form factor, and much more. Properties
can be retrieved with the getCapability
and getCapabilities
methods of the
Device API.
Most of the properties of the requesting device can be detected, depending on the device detection implementation you’re using. For example, you can obtain the brand name of the device with this code:
String brand = device.getCapability("OEM");
You can grab many other device properties, including HardwareModel
,
HardwareName
, ReleaseYear
, and ReleaseMonth
. You can also get boolean
values like IsMobile
, IsTablet
, and many more.
Keep in mind the Device API is an API. The underlying implementation of the Device API may change. You can also implement your own. Thus, the device property names are specific and proprietary to the underlying Device API implementation.
Now that you know about the Device API, you can use it to make sure that your grandma’s gnarly tablet and your cousin’s awesome new smart phone can make requests to your portal and receive identical content. This will make everyone happy!