Trumail is a free and open source email validation/verification system. It is available in three forms, the Golang client library verifier
for use in your own Go projects, a public API endpoint (more info: https://trumail.io), and a public Docker image on DockerHub (see: https://hub.docker.com/r/sdwolfe32/trumail/).
NOTE: It is highly recommended (due to potential heroku IP blacklisting resulting in failed validations) that you host the service yourself either using a Docker image or by forking and serving this project on your own instance. However, self-hosting Trumail requires bidirectional communication on port 25 which most residential ISPs restrict. AWS and Digitalocean both allow this.
Using the API is very simple. All that's needed to validate an address is to send a GET
request using the below URL with one of our two supported formats (json/xml).
trumail.io/{format}/{email}
package main
import (
"log"
trumail "github.com/sdwolfe32/trumail/verifier"
)
func main() {
v := trumail.NewVerifier(20, "YOUR_HOSTNAME.COM", "YOUR_EMAIL@DOMAIN.COM")
res := v.Verify("test@gmail.com")
log.Println(*res[0])
}
docker run -p 8000:8000 -e SOURCE_ADDR=my.email@gmail.com sdwolfe32/trumail
Verifying the deliverability of an email address isn't a very complicated process. In fact, the process Trumail takes to verify an address is really only half that of sending a standard email transmission and is outlined below...
First a TCP connection is formed with the MX server on port 25.
HELO my-domain.com // We identify ourselves as my-domain.com (set via environment variable)
MAIL FROM: me@my-domain.com // Set the FROM address being our own
RCPT TO: test-email@example.com // Set the recipient and receive a (200, 500, etc..) from the server
QUIT // Cancel the transaction, we have all the info we need
As you can see we first form a tcp connection with the mail server on port 25. We then identify ourselves as example.com and set a reply-to email of admin@example.com (both these are configured via the SOURCE_ADDR environment variable). The last, and obviously most important step in this process is the RCPT command. This is where, based on the response from the mail server, we are able to conclude the deliverability of a given email address. A 200 implies a valid inbox and anything else implies either an error with our connection to the mail server, or a problem with the address requested.
The first 3 command steps above process happen here. Deliverability is checked here. Transaction is cancelled (QUIT) and the connection is closed here.
Copyright (c) 2018, Steven Wolfe. All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
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Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
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Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
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