Programmer Payback

ASP.NET allows you to get at some great information about the client and the server via the HttpContext.Current.Request.ServerVariables collection. Likewise, Silverlight allows you to get at a few local variables of its own through the System.Windows.Browser.HtmlPage.BrowserInformation object.

But, to use these variables we often need to know what kind of values to expect. For example, let’s say you’re going to create a condition based on which browser the user is using. You would use BrowserInformation.Name. But Name is a string, not an enum. So what are the various values that can be returned by this property? This might be documented somewhere for the officialy supported browsers, but the only fool proof way is to actually try it by writing a dummy Silverlight app that spills out this variable and run it in all the different browsers to see what comes back. The same applies to ServerVariables but even more so because this is just a big dictionary so you don’t even know which variables are going to be present let alone what their values will be.

Here’s a utility I wrote for anyone to use that will help you look at all the BrowserInfo properties and ServerVariables. Hit this page from any machine to see what values it is sending up to the server. Bookmark this page, it will probalby come in handy someday when you’re scratching your head wondering what useragent you’re sending up to the server.

Another cool part is that it not only shows you what servervariables are available at the time your web page is requested, but also what servervariables are available when you hit a WCF service from Silverlight. There are some subtle differences.

Also note that it’s hosted on Azure so you can also get a glimpse of which ServerVariables Azure provides access to. On first glance it looks the same as Windows Server but I haven’t done a variable by variable comparison.

Enjoy, I hope this comes in handy!

Download the source code here to see how it works or to host on your own server.