Email Address validation using IP*Works .NET

Programming

IP*Works is now available to ASP.NET developers in a fully-managed .NET
component. The component offers the same functionality as the classic ASP
component but does not require the component to be installed on the production
server. All you need to do to utilize IP*Works is to drop it into your /BIN
folder in the root of your web application.

IP*Works provides many useful features including network troubleshooting
tools like the TraceRoute or Ping utilities. You can also sending emails with
attachments using the SMTP or FileMailer feature. IP*Works also provides a FTP
and TFTP component which is very useful to web developers with web host
providers that do not allow anonymous FTP access. For a complete list of all of
the features, visit /N Software's website at
http://www.nsoftware.com

In this article, I will demonstrate email validation, one of the features
IP*Works .NET offers to ASP.NET developers. IP*Works has many advantages over
the built-in ASP.Net classes. One limitation of the built-in ASP.Net class is
that you can only validate email addresses based on the A record of their domain
name. When using just the A Record, I found that an email address that did not
have a web address associated with the domain name would fail. IP*Works solves
this problem by allowing you to validate against the MX record directly, a more
efficient way to deal with this type of validation.

The code below retrieves the MX record for a domain name cached on a DNS
server. Start with the HTML to build a simple form to submit an email address:


<body>
<form id="Form1" method="post" runat="server">
		Enter your email address:

		<asp:TextBox id="TextBox1" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
<asp:Button id="button1" runat="server" Text="Submit"> </asp:Button>

		

		<asp:Label id="lblvalid" runat="server"></asp:Label>
	</form>
</body>

Now for the code which is
written in VB.NET:

(Short explanations of the code follows)


Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As 
   System.EventArgs)
        Dim MX As New nsoftware.IPWorks.Mx

        MX.Timeout = "20"
        MX.DNSServer = "ns3.orcsweb.com"
        MX.Resolve(TextBox1.Text)

        If MX.MailServer <> "" Then
            lblvalid.Text = MX.MailServer
        Else

            lblvalid.Text = "Email Address is not Valid"
       End If

    End Sub

The IP*Works component was invoked by declaring MX as new
nsoftware.IPWorks.Mx.

The timeout was set to 20 seconds and uses ORCS Web's DNS server
"ns3.orcsweb.com". (You can use any DNS server you want.)

You can jump right to resolving the email address without removing the email
username and the "@" symbol by using "MX.Resolve()".

To retrieve the mail record use "MX.MailServer"

This is all you need to validate an email address. How you handle results is
up to you. More example code is available by downloading the IP*Works .NET
component from http://www.nsoftware.com/

Author: Ben Higgins

Ben Higgins is a member of the
ORCS Web, Inc.
Webteam - a company that provides managed hosting services for clients who
develop and deploy their applications on Microsoft Windows platforms.

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