Enabling device-based redirects¶

Device detection and redirects¶

Acquia’s Varnish® service inspects incoming HTTP user-agent headers and attempts to detect the type of client that is performing the request. After the Varnish service detects the device, it will add an X-Ua-Device HTTP request header to the information that is sent to your application. Headers of this type can have any of the following values:

• pc
• bot
• tablet-ipad
• tablet-rim
• tablet-hp
• tablet-kindle
• tablet-android
• tablet-microsoft
• mobile-generic
• mobile-smartphone
• mobile-bot
• mobile-iphone
• mobile-android
• mobile-firefoxos

Acquia Cloud will determine if you can use the detected device, you can issue other common HTTP response headers (such as Cache-Control or Location) as needed to differentiate and manipulate the flow of traffic.

The Varnish service also allows you to redirect traffic based on the device in use. Applications can respond with URLs to redirect to in any of the following headers:

• X-AH-Desktop-Redirect (for desktops and laptop devices)
• X-AH-Mobile-Redirect (for mobile devices)
• X-AH-Tablet-Redirect (for tablets)

Varnish does not inspect URLs, which means that your application can redirect traffic for certain devices to entirely different domain names.

Redirects based on the request user-agent header¶

In the Acquia Cloud platform, you can redirect visitors in the Varnish layer, based on the devices they are using, as determined by the user-agent HTTP header in the request. Acquia Cloud supports the following HTTP headers for device-based redirects:

• Desktop devices – X-AH-Desktop-Redirect
• Mobile devices – X-AH-Mobile-Redirect
• Tablet devices – X-AH-Tablet-Redirect

Setting up device redirects in the settings.php file¶

You can set device-based redirects by using your Drupal application’s settings.php file to set HTTP headers in the response.

The following sample redirects tablets to t.mydomain.com, while redirecting mobile devices to m.mydomain.com:

drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Tablet-Redirect', 'http://t.mydomain.com');
drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Mobile-Redirect', 'http://m.mydomain.com');

If you want to set this only for specific hosts (for example, www.mydomain.com) in the docroot (for example, if you’re running a Drupal multisite), adjust the lines in the settings.php file as follows:

if (isset($_ENV['HTTP_HOST']) && strpos($_ENV['HTTP_HOST'], 'mydomain.com'))
{
  drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Tablet-Redirect', 'http://t.mydomain.com');
  drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Mobile-Redirect', 'http://m.mydomain.com');
}

You can set both redirects to the same domain if you have one subdomain that handles both tablets and other mobile devices. If you set only the X-AH-Mobile-Redirect header, requests from tablets will remain on the current domain.

The following example demonstrates how you can set up your redirects if you are hosting a desktop, mobile, and tablet application from the same codebase:

if (isset($_ENV['HTTP_HOST'])) {
  switch ($_ENV['HTTP_HOST']) {
    case 'www.mydomain.com':
    case 'mydomain.com':
      drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Tablet-Redirect', 'http://t.mydomain.com');
      drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Mobile-Redirect', 'http://m.mydomain.com');
      break;
    case 'm.mydomain.com':
      drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Tablet-Redirect',  'http://t.mydomain.com');
      drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Desktop-Redirect', 'http://www.mydomain.com');
      break;
    case 't.mydomain.com':
      drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Mobile-Redirect',  'http://m.mydomain.com');
      drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Desktop-Redirect', 'http://www.mydomain.com');
      break;
  }
}

The following examples demonstrate how you can set up redirects for multiple domains (example.com and example2.com) within a Drupal multisite installation. Ensure that you modify these examples for your own domain names.

if (isset($_ENV['HTTP_HOST'])) {
  if (strpos($_ENV['HTTP_HOST'], 'example.com') !== FALSE) {
  // matches every domain where  'example.com' is a substring
    drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Tablet-Redirect', 'http://t.example.com');
    drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Mobile-Redirect', 'http://m.example.com');
  }
  else if (strpos($_ENV['HTTP_HOST'], 'example2.com') !== FALSE) {
  // matches every domain where  'example2.com' is a substring
    drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Tablet-Redirect', 'http://t.example2.com');
    drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Mobile-Redirect', 'http://m.example.com');
  }
}

if (isset($_ENV['HTTP_HOST'])) {
  if (strpos($_ENV['HTTP_HOST'], 'example.com') === 0) {
  // matches every domain that *begins* with  'example.com'
  // would also match a theoretical domain  'example.com.au' for example
    drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Tablet-Redirect', 'http://t.example.com');
    drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Mobile-Redirect', 'http://m.example.com');
  }
  else if (strpos($_ENV['HTTP_HOST'], 'example2.com') === 0) {
  // matches every domain that *begins* with  'example2.com'
  // would also match a theoretical domain  'example2.com.au' for example
    drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Tablet-Redirect', 'http://t.example2.com');
    drupal_add_http_header('X-AH-Mobile-Redirect', 'http://m.example.com');
  }
}

Redirects with HTTPS¶

Drupal will correctly identify incoming HTTPS requests using the normal HTTPS server environment variable if your application uses the Acquia Cloud include file statement in your application’s settings.php file.

Opting out of device-based redirects¶

You can provide a method for users on mobile or tablet devices to view the desktop version of the application if they prefer. You can do this with a custom block that appears on every page, letting visitors select the desktop version. For information about how to do this, see Circumvent mobile redirects with a desktop cookie.

Setting headers in Drupal¶

You can also set the headers in Drupal itself to perform device-based redirects. This method works only for pages actually served by Drupal. Static assets, such as files, are not affected by the headers. The benefit of using Drupal’s headers is that you can create more complex device-based redirects based solely on the landing page.

Many modules are available on Drupal.org that can help you create device-based redirects for your application. Acquia does not test these and cannot make specific recommendations for their use on Acquia Cloud.

Use device-based redirects instead of using the Drupal Mobile Tools module, since that module sets a session cookie, which bypasses the Varnish cache and therefore can negatively affect your application’s performance on Acquia Cloud. For more information, see Session cookies invalidate Varnish caching.