Re: can the telnet command be automated?

I'm jumping in with both feet and no shoes!!

This may not pertain here, but there are many examples on the Net of using TELNET to port 25 for testing SMTP processes. I can't speak to whether this is "right" - I just know it's done a lot.

One link is from Microsoft - sorry, had to say it! http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa995718%28EXCHG.65%29.aspx

There are many others, if you google for "telnet smtp test". We have knowledge base articles on doing this, as well. But it's only for testing, you get to enter the SMTP commands yourself. We don't recommend it for production, only as a troubleshooting tool.

Am I saying something already posted? Hope not. And also hope I'm not appearing to contradict Scott's points.

Late in the day!
Vern

On 11/9/2010 3:58 PM, Scott Klement wrote:

Hi Tim,

On 11/9/2010 2:24 PM, tim.dclinc@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Can you point me to where I might find an "email software solution. I see a
lot of php stuff on the net for email validation, but im not sure they cover
the issue you brought up (with exception to #2).

That wasn't my point. I didn't evaluate which products were on the
market -- my point was that when you want to do SMTP, you shouldn't use
Telnet software. You should use SMTP software.

Personally, I tend to write my own.

I have your LIBHTTP library installed, but not sure if I can use it for this
purpose. I don't see any example (at least that I can figure out) that might
come close to doing what I am looking for.

No. That's HTTP software. You need SMTP software. I'm not sure why
this is so difficult to understand... to do SMTP tasks, you need SMTP
software. It seems simple to me, I don't see why it's hard for you.

I did publish some SMTP software, you'll find it here:
http://systeminetwork.com/article/send-e-mail-messages-smtp

The article's focus is for sending e-mail, so you'll probably look at it
and say "gee, that's not what I asked for"... but honestly, what you're
asking to do is something I consider inadvisable -- and I wouldn't
publish an article on that subject!

But the SMTP tools at the link above are capable of what you describe...
you'd just have to do something like:

hsmtp = SMTP_new('whatever');
if ( SMTP_connect(hsmtp) = FAIL );
// handle error
endif;

if ( SMTP_from(hsmtp: 'your-email-address-here') = FAIL );
// handle error
endif;

if ( SMTP_recip(hsmtp: 'address-to-check') = FAIL );
// server won't handle the address you provided
// so something's up.
endif;

// add additional SMTP_recip() calls to check additional
// addresses.

SMTP_free(hsmtp);

But I really, really discourage you from doing this -- as I've tried to
from the start of this discussion. This is not really a valid technique
for checking an e-mail address. As David says, it could even get your
address banned as a 'spammer.'

I also suggested that you could write your own software instead of
finding a package. You didn't seem to even notice that I mentioned it.
But if you'd like to learn that, you might be interested in the
handout for the talk I give on TCP/IP programming:
http://www.scottklement.com/presentations/#RPGSOCK

At the end of the handout are links to articles and other things that
will help you learn how to do TCP/IP programming in RPG if you're so
inclined.

Furthermore, I've also written articles about validating an e-mail
address (using somewhat more valid techniques).

Using a regular expression:
http://systeminetwork.com/article.cfm?id=52826

Using DNS Lookups:
http://systeminetwork.com/article.cfm?id=17633

However, neither of these is perfect. As I said before, there is no
really great way of validating an e-mail address. There's no method
that will give you perfect results. People hide their e-mail addresses
to avoid spam, so you'll never be able to truly validate an e-mail
address, unless you send a message and get back a response.