fake-useragent

2.2.0 · active · verified Thu Apr 09

fake-useragent is a Python library that generates up-to-date and realistic browser user-agent strings for web scraping and testing purposes. It dynamically fetches a database of real-world user agents to provide diverse and current options. The current version is 2.2.0, with minor releases occurring every few months to update the user-agent database or fix small issues.

Warnings

breaking Since version 2.0.0, OS and browser options are case-sensitive. Previously, they might have been implicitly converted or handled with more flexibility.
Fix: Ensure all OS and browser option parameters (e.g., in `ua.get_ua(browser='Chrome', os='Windows')`) are passed with the correct casing as specified in the documentation (e.g., 'chrome', 'firefox', 'windows', 'macos').
breaking In version 2.0.0, the `platform` type value 'pc' was changed to 'desktop'. If you were specifically requesting desktop user agents using `platform='pc'`, your code will no longer work as expected.
Fix: Replace `platform='pc'` with `platform='desktop'` when calling methods like `ua.get_ua()` to specify desktop user agents.
gotcha Since version 1.5.0, the `min_percentage` parameter for filtering user agents is effectively useless. The new data sources introduced in this version and later do not provide usage statistics, so this filter is ignored.
Fix: Remove `min_percentage` from your calls, as it will not filter user agents based on usage. Rely on other parameters for selection.
gotcha fake-useragent requires Python 3.9 or newer since version 2.0.1. Attempting to use it with older Python versions will result in compatibility errors.
Fix: Upgrade your Python environment to version 3.9 or newer if you are using fake-useragent 2.0.1 or later.
gotcha On its first run (or when the cache expires), `fake-useragent` attempts to download a JSON file (~500KB) from an external source (currently intoli.com). This can introduce network delays, fail due to connectivity issues, or be blocked by firewalls/proxies.
Fix: Ensure reliable network access for initialization. Handle `FakeUserAgentError` for network-related failures. For restricted environments, consider pre-caching the data or using options like `cache=False` (though this fetches data on every call) or `use_cache_server=False`.

Install

pip install fake-useragent Install latest version

Imports

UserAgent
```
from fake_useragent import UserAgent
```
FakeUserAgentError
```
from fake_useragent import FakeUserAgentError
```
Exception for handling errors like network issues during data fetching.

Quickstart

This quickstart demonstrates how to initialize `UserAgent` and retrieve various types of user-agent strings. It includes basic error handling for potential network issues during the initial data download or cache refresh.

from fake_useragent import UserAgent, FakeUserAgentError

try:
    ua = UserAgent()
    print(f"Random User-Agent: {ua.random}")
    print(f"Chrome User-Agent: {ua.chrome}")
    print(f"Firefox User-Agent: {ua.firefox}")
    print(f"User-Agent for macOS: {ua.get_ua('chrome', os='macos')}")
    print(f"User-Agent for desktop: {ua.get_ua(platform='desktop')}")
except FakeUserAgentError as e:
    print(f"Error fetching user agents: {e}")
    print("This might be due to network issues or the first-time data download failing.")

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