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matrixebiz
Roku Guru

Change User-Agent of Roku Video Player

Hello, is it possible to change the User-Agent that the Roku video player uses to emulate iPad instead of what it currently uses?

I have a HLS stream feed that only works on an iPad and not in Windows VLC or the Roku Video Player so I would like to change the User-Agent of the Roku Video Player to be an iPad. 
Is this possible? What User-Agent does the Roku Video player currently use? Thank you

I found this thread : https://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?t=57084 but I'm not sure what I have to do if possible. I would like to be able to specify/change the User-Agent in the Scengraph Categories/Feed file for the stream/feed
roVideoPlayer will not be supported Jan 2019 so need to know how to do the change with Scenegraph SDK when it reads the Feeds file.
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19 REPLIES 19
matrixebiz
Roku Guru

Re: Change User-Agent of Roku Video Player

Please let me know if you need more info or if this is not possible. Thanks
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marcelo_cabral
Roku Guru

Re: Change User-Agent of Roku Video Player

All you need to do is add the header

          urlXfer = createObject("roUrlTransfer")
          urlXfer.SetCertificatesFile("common:/certs/ca-bundle.crt")
          urlXfer.InitClientCertificates()
          urlXfer.setUrl(uri)
          urlXfer.setPort(m.port)
         urlXfer.AddHeader("User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/56.0.2924.87 Safari/537.36")



The documentation is here:
https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/ifHttpAgent#ifHttpAgent-AddHeader(nameasString,valueasString...
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MasterRed
Visitor

Re: Change User-Agent of Roku Video Player

Saludos Marcelo, mi consulta es parecida a la de matrixebiz o sino igual:
Estoy usando la nueva sdk de roku Multilive: https://github.com/rokudev/multi-live-channel, muy diferente a las anteriores versiones del player, entre este paquete se encuentra la carpeta components y el archivo config.brs, el cual relaciono a continuación, es un ejemplo con varios streaming, la pregunta es: en donde debo colocar el encabezado para el User-Agent, ya que algunos de los streaming a emitir solo podrían funcionar con el User-Agent, Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/56.0.2924.87 Safari/537.36, he dedicado mucho tiempo a esto pero sin éxito alguno, de antemano gracias por el apoyo y la atención prestada.

' ********** Copyright 2016 Roku Corp.  All Rights Reserved. **********

Function loadConfig() as Object
    arr = [
'##### Format for inputting stream info #####
'## For each channel, enclose in brackets ## 
'{
'   Title: Channel Title
'   streamFormat: Channel stream type (ex. "hls", "ism", "mp4", etc..)
'   Logo: Channel Logo (ex. "http://Roku.com/Roku.jpg)
'   Stream: URL to stream (ex. http://hls.Roku.com/talks/xxx.m3u8)
'}

{
    Title: "CANAL 1"
    streamFormat: "hls"
    Logo: "pkg:/images/canal-1-.jpg"
    Stream: "http://canal-streaming.com/playlist.m3u8"
}
{
    Title: "CANAL 2"
    streamFormat: "hls"
    Logo: "pkg:/images/canal-2-.jpg"
    Stream: "http://canal-streaming.com/playlist.m3u8"
}
{
    Title: "CANAL 3"
    streamFormat: "hls"
    Logo: "pkg:/images/canal-3-.jpg"
    Stream: "http://canal-streaming.com/playlist.m3u8"
}
    
'##### Make sure all Channel content is above this line #####    
    ] 
    return arr
End Functio
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marcelo_cabral
Roku Guru

Re: Change User-Agent of Roku Video Player

"MasterRed" wrote:
Saludos Marcelo, mi consulta es parecida a la de matrixebiz o sino igual:
Estoy usando la nueva sdk de roku Multilive: https://github.com/rokudev/multi-live-channel, muy diferente a las anteriores versiones del player, entre este paquete se encuentra la carpeta components y el archivo config.brs, el cual relaciono a continuación, es un ejemplo con varios streaming, la pregunta es: en donde debo colocar el encabezado para el User-Agent, ya que algunos de los streaming a emitir solo podrían funcionar con el User-Agent, Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/56.0.2924.87 Safari/537.36, he dedicado mucho tiempo a esto pero sin éxito alguno, de antemano gracias por el apoyo y la atención prestada.

Sorry but I will answer in english, I'm from Brazil, so I speak portuguese, I do understand spanish but to write I'm more comfortable in english..
According to the documentation of the Video node, you should set the HttpHeaders on the "Content-Metadata", see the following link section "Data Bindings":
https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/Content+Meta-Data

Name: HttpHeaders
Type: array of strings
If set, the Scene Graph Audio or Video node sends these headers to the server. Each string must be of the format "name:value" When used with a Scene Graph Audio or Video node, the node or global HttpAgent is found, as explained elsewhere in this documentation. When this Content Meta-Data is played and this attribute is set, all HTTP headers in the agent are cleared and replaced with the headers defined by this attribute.
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matrixebiz
Roku Guru

Re: Change User-Agent of Roku Video Player

"marcelo.cabral" wrote:
All you need to do is add the header

          urlXfer = createObject("roUrlTransfer")
          urlXfer.SetCertificatesFile("common:/certs/ca-bundle.crt")
          urlXfer.InitClientCertificates()
          urlXfer.setUrl(uri)
          urlXfer.setPort(m.port)
         urlXfer.AddHeader("User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/56.0.2924.87 Safari/537.36")



The documentation is here:
https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/ifHttpAgent#ifHttpAgent-AddHeader(nameasString,valueasString...

Hello, thank you for responding, so where would I input this code in the example Video Feed file?;
https://devtools.web.roku.com/videoplay ... issues.xml

or do I have to create a separate file.brs in my channel components folder with the above code in it (see bottom of page);
https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/Video

Then I add a line somewhere in the "Item" spot to reference the code?

<item sdImg="https://images/RobHopkins.jpg" hdImg="https://mages/RobHopkins.jpg">
<title>Rob Hopkins: Transition to a world without oil</title>
<contentId>10012</contentId>
<contentType>Talk</contentType>
<contentQuality>SD</contentQuality>
<streamFormat>hls</streamFormat>
<media>
<streamQuality>SD</streamQuality>
<streamBitrate>0</streamBitrate>
<streamUrl>http://video.ted.com/talks/podcast/RobHopkins_2009G_480.m3u8</streamUrl>
</media>
<synopsis></synopsis>
<genres></genres>
<runtime></runtime>
</item>

is there a list of the various agents? So the below is iPad?;
("User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/56.0.2924.87 Safari/537.36")
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MasterRed
Visitor

Re: Change User-Agent of Roku Video Player

Hi Marcelo, Thanks for the answer, I will test and comment on the next few days, thanks in advance for your support !.
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MasterRed
Visitor

Re: Change User-Agent of Roku Video Player

Hi, matrixebiz do you have the original roku sdk with which you are working ?, I have put to work different urls that require User-Agent and also Referer, But I need to see the brs files and do the test on the roku device, I have live streaming that request the User-Agent to do tests




<item sdImg="https://images/RobHopkins.jpg" hdImg="https://mages/RobHopkins.jpg">
<title>Rob Hopkins: Transition to a world without oil</title>
<contentId>10012</contentId>
<contentType>Talk</contentType>
<contentQuality>SD</contentQuality>
<streamFormat>hls</streamFormat>
<media>
<streamQuality>SD</streamQuality>
<streamBitrate>0</streamBitrate>
<streamUrl>http://video.ted.com/talks/podcast/RobHopkins_2009G_480.m3u8</streamUrl>
</media>
<synopsis></synopsis>
<genres></genres>
<runtime></runtime>
</item>

is there a list of the various agents? So the below is iPad?;
("User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/56.0.2924.87 Safari/537.36")
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belltown
Roku Guru

Re: Change User-Agent of Roku Video Player

It depends on what OS version, browser and browser version you're using, etc. But for an iPad running Safari under iOS 10.2.1, the User-Agent string will be something like:

"Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 10_2_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/602.4.6 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.0 Mobile/14D27 Safari/602.1"
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matrixebiz
Roku Guru

Re: Change User-Agent of Roku Video Player

@ MasterRed - I am just using the "SceneGraph version of the SDK1 VideoPlayer Channel"  located here : https://github.com/rokudev/videoplayer-channel 
So I'm ready when they get rid of the old code Jan 2019, I need to create my channel in SG instead of the old VideoPlayer SDK

@ Belltown - When you say "It depends on what OS version, browser and browser version you're using", I don't have an iPad but what I am doing is accessing the stream URL on a Windows 7 Chrome browser and the server is returning an error "This content is not available to this user agent" so I use the Chrome Agent switcher plug-in and change the agent to iPad which looks to be emulating "Safari 6 on iOS 6 Apple iPad"  and the stream downloads, so I am trying to get the Roku to emulate the iPad the same way using the Roku User-Agent command, so I guess the User-Agent string can be the latest iPad OS if need be, doesn't matter. Not sure if this will work with the Roku video player switching the User-Agent the way I think it should but would like to try it. Hope that clears up what I'm trying to accomplish but I just don't know where to put the code then call it just before the stream is read in my stream code above.
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