Vipps

User Agent

An introduction to user agents

Edit "User Agent" on GitHub

User-Agent

The term user agent is used for both the web browser used by the payer as well as the system making HTTP requests towards Swedbank Pay’s APIs. The difference between these two and how they relate to each other is illustrated in the below sequence diagram:

 Payer Payer Merchant Merchant Swedbank Pay Swedbank PayUser-Agent: P ①User-Agent: M { userAgent: "P" } ②Store request data{ "initiatingSystemUserAgent": "M" } ③
  1. First, the payer makes an HTTP request with their web browser towards the merchant’s website. This HTTP request contains a User-Agent header, here given the value P (for “Payer”).
  2. The merchant performs an HTTP request towards Swedbank Pay.
    1. The merchant extracts the P value of the User-Agent header from the payer’s browser and sends it to Swedbank Pay in the userAgent field in the JSON request body.
    2. The merchant also composes its own user agent string and sends it to Swedbank Pay in the User-Agent HTTP request header, here represented as the value M (for “Merchant”).
  3. Swedbank Pay receives "userAgent": "P" and User-Agent: M, stores the values and returns the M value in the initiatingSystemUserAgent response JSON field.

The user agent strings are used for statistical purposes by Swedbank Pay.