ColdFusion Email Verification Utility

Yesterday, I spent a little time helping a fellow CF coder with a problem he had verifying email addresses. In short, he needed to check that an email address actually exists before their system allows a user to register for their services.

It was one of those questions that made me realize I often need or want to do the same thing but never bothered to explore a solution (hello, laziness!). So, I decided to get off my proverbial ass and help him with this issue.

The result was a decent function, which I submitted to CFLib.org yesterday, but don't know if/when it will be available. I've also revised it a good bit since my submission to CFLib (if it gets published, I'll update it immediately).

Function Overview
The function takes the email address as a parameter, checks it, first, with CF's IsValid() method and then calls a Web Service (ValidateEmail) at www.webservicex.net to verify the email.

Once complete, a structure is returned with the following keys:

emailStatus -- boolean value indicating whether or not the email passed validation and verification
message -- string containing a user-friendly note about theprocess
resultCode -- string set to valid (all good), invalid (fails either validation or verification), or fail (Web Service fails)
wsdl -- string with the Web Service used
attemptTime -- date set to the moment when the Web Service call was made

CFSCRIPT Function


 /**
  * Verifies the existence of an email address by checking the provided email address against the ValidateEmail web service.
  * 
  * @param emailaddress  string containing the email address to test
  * @return struct (emailResult: true/false; message: String; resultCode:String; wsdl:String; attemptTime:Date  )
  * @author Craig Kaminsky (www.baddogsconsulting.com)
  * @version 1, May 7, 2009
  */
 function verifyEmail( emailaddress )
 {
  // setup local vars
  var email_address = Trim( emailaddress );
  var results = StructNew();
  var validationResponse = "";
  var ws = "";
  // add the default keys and values for returned struct 
  results.wsdl = "http://www.webservicex.net/ValidateEmail.asmx?wsdl";
  results.attemptTime = Now();
  // setup the web service
  ws = createObject( "webservice", results.wsdl );
  // before we proceed to call the web service, let's make sure it's a properly formatted email
  if( IsValid( "email", email_address ))
  {
   // setup some exception handling just in case the Web Service is down, etc.
   try
   {
    validationResponse = ws.IsValidEmail( Email=email_address );
   }
   catch( Any err )
   {
    results.emailResult = false;
    results.message = "Web Service response error: " + err.Message;
    results.resultCode = "fail";
    // exit the function and return the results struct
    return results;
   }   
   // check the response from the web service
   if( Trim( validationResponse ) is "YES" )
   {
    results.emailResult = true;
    results.message = "Email address passed validation and verification.";
    results.resultCode = "valid";
   }
   else
   {
    results.emailResult = false;
    results.message = "Email address passed validation but failed verification.";
    results.resultCode = "invalid";
   }
  }
  else
  {
   results.emailResult = false;
   results.message = "Email address failed validation. It is not properly formatted.";
   results.resultCode = "invalid";
  } 
  // and return the struct
  return results;
 }

The function tested successfully on CF7 or higher and Railo 3 and higher.

You may download the script in a Zip archive from:
www.baddogsconsulting.com/projects/emailverifier/verifyEmail.cfm.zip.

I also have a CFC version of this function as well. If you're interested, let me know and I can add it to this post or send to you.

Comments

asava samuel

Here is a good .net component to verify email addresses:
http://www.kellermansoftware.com/p-37-net-email-validation.aspx

Craig Kaminsky

@Jason: if you feel like it, check out the zip archive I finally uploaded to S3. It's a bit more enhanced email verification utility.

I'll try a couple of hotmail emails today, debugging the process, and see if I come up with some errors, too. Thanks!

Craig Kaminsky

New repo for projects:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/oss-projects/email.verification.cfml.zip

Jason

hi mate, im trying with your email verification tool but somehow my hotmail address is considered invalid?

I supposed its a problem with the web service rather than your script.

Thanks for the tool.

Craig Kaminsky

@anon: yes, I will!! I had an issue with my previous host and took both of my sites off their servers since they were jacking up the prices (by almost double!).

If you want, please send me an email (imageaid at gmail dot com) and I can send you the zip archive now (rather than waiting for me to upload).

Anonymous

I am sorry, but I was interested in your ajax e-mail verification tool, and was wondering if you could make it downloadable again? Thank you for your generosity!

Craig Kaminsky

@pgpguy: sorry about that. moving sites and such around and have had little time to take care of it this summer. I uploaded a set zip file to:
http://www.baddogsconsulting.com/projects/email.verification.cfml.zip

Thanks!
Craig

pgpguy

Craig- can't get to the imageaid.net url. Is there another way to reach the cfc?

Thanks again for a great bit of code!

Craig Kaminsky

The original function I wrote, which is but a skeleton of the above is on CFlib: http://www.cflib.org/udf/verifyEmail I hope to update it shortly (not sure of the process).

In the meantime, I implemented a basic Ajax interface for using this function (in its CFC version). You can try it at:
http://www.imageaid.net/projects/emailverifier/index.html

I also added a Zip archive of the files used so that the code can be download, edited, etc. The download link is at the bottom of the above page.

Craig Kaminsky

This comment has been removed by the author.

Craig Kaminsky

@gary: thanks, very much. It's funny that you mentioned an Ajax implementation. My CFC version that I mention is for just that reason! I'm setting it up as a mini-project and will be uploading it shortly. If you're interested, check back Friday (5/8) for the download link.

Gary Fenton

Cool. This web service actually asks the mail server if the mailbox exists. The others I've come across only ping the mail server which doesn't check for invalid mailbox names.

This would work really well as an ajax thing, so while a user is filling out the next text field (postal address or whatever) your function can be called to check the email address (which takes 2 to 10 secs) and then alert the user if there's a problem.

Good find, and good new CF lib. Thanks.

Flex 3. Make Namespaces in SOAP XML Go Away

In my ongoing Flex/.NET Web Service hell, I've come across a solution to remove all the namespaces from the SOAP XML returned from a (.NET) Web Service.

You might be wondering why one would need to strip XML namespaces from the SOAP response. The long and short of it is that there are known bugs (that Adobe will not fix for v3.x but is fixed in Gumbo/v4) in the Flex 3 SDKs related to the auto-generation of AS3 classes from a WSDL file and the subsequent decoding of complex SOAP XML objects to their corresponding ActionScript objects. In brief, Flex doesn't create the AS3 classes "properly" such that they can decode the response how a developer not only would expect but also need. Google "SOAP decoding error Flex 3 .NET" and you should get plenty of information, or just skim through some of my Flex-labeled posts.

You can fight with this and waste hours upon hours, days upon days, and weeks upon weeks (like me -- this whole thing made me realize how stubborn I am/can be). Or, you can take a somewhat more efficient, if not more intelligent, approach and revert to using Flex's WebService class for methods that throw errors, manipulating the returned SOAP XML manually.

An issue (I use 'issue' very loosely here) with the e4x format in ActionScript is that namespaces in your XML will make it hard to impossible to work with the XML. Ultimately, in my opinion, one is better off simply stripping all the namespaces out of the XML. I initially tried to go about this programmatically, using properties of the XML class (i.e., namespace). This had mixed results and took up a lot of my time. So, this morning, with the help of some good blog posts and forum topics, I found a nice function that cleanly strips out all the namespace data from an XML file and returns a "clean" XML string.

I want to stress that the code from the following function is not mine. I found it on ActionScript.org's Forums. Scroll down to the question titled 'How do I strip all namespaces from the XML?'

If you don't want to go to that site, the function to strip namespaces follows with minor edits to the author's post (above) in order to fit the process into my app:

private function reportHistoryReceived( evt:ResultEvent ):void
{
 var dsReport:XMLList; // the parent of the next var, below, in the SOAP result XML
 var reportHistory:XMLList; // the XML list that contains the elements I ultimately want from the SOAP XML
 var xml:XML; // the XML that will be 'cleaned' of namespaces
 var item:XML; // the variable to be used in my for..each loop below
 var respXML:XML; // the raw XML from the result event
 var xmlSource:String; // the string representation of the response XML (respXML)
 respXML = evt.result[0] as XML;
 xmlSource = respXML.toXMLString();   
 xmlSource = xmlSource.replace(/<[^!?]?[^>]+?>/g, removeNamspaces); // will invoke the function detailed below
 xml = XML(xmlSource); // take the cleaned XML string and parse it back to valid XML
 dsReport = xml..*::DsReport; // grabbing the parent element of the returned data
 reportHistory = dsReport.children(); // the specific items of data being returned from the Web Service
 for each( item in reportHistory ) // looping over the reportHistory elements to act on them
 {
  trace( "XML Item Study: " + item.Study ); // ye ole boring trace statement :)
 } 
}
// the sweet little cleaner function from a User named: wvxvw (THANKS DUDE, OR DUDETTE!!!!)
private function removeNamspaces(...rest):String
{
    rest[0] = rest[0].replace(/xmlns[^"]+\"[^"]+\"/g, "");
    var attrs:Array = rest[0].match(/\"[^"]*\"/g);
    rest[0] = rest[0].replace(/\"[^"]*\"/g, "%attribute value%");
    rest[0] = rest[0].replace(/(<\/?|\s)\w+\:/g, "$1");
    while (rest[0].indexOf("%attribute value%") > 0)
    {
        rest[0] = rest[0].replace("%attribute value%", attrs.shift());
    }
    return rest[0];
}

The first function, reportHistoryReceived is invoked when the Web Service returns its successful result. I've commented out the function, line by line, to explain what it's doing with each step.

There is one thing I wanted to point out for anyone out there, like me, who might be looking at the parameter of the removeNamespace function and wondering what the hell '...rest' is. Rather than try to explain it myself, I think the person below did an excellent job.

"The ...rest parameter is a special parameter placed at the end of a parameter list in a function that specifies that there can be any number of additional arguments of any type passed into that function when its called. The form of the parameter is 3 periods followed by a keyword. When the function is called, the additional arguments are assigned to that keyword in the form of an array."

-Source: Kirupa.com

I have somehow missed this little gem thus far in my Flex/AS3 life (not to mention other languages) but think it's a nice, little tool to add to our arsenals!

Comments

Craig Kaminsky

you may now download these files from S3
http://s3.amazonaws.com/oss-projects/namespace.remover.flex.app.zip

Anonymous

I wasted a week and finally found this post useful.
http://www.actionscript.org/forums/showthread.php3?t=162565

chaky

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!THANK YOU!THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

ADOBE IS SO STUPID! ADOBE IS SO STUPID! ADOBE IS SO STUPID! ADOBE IS SO STUPID! ADOBE IS SO STUPID! ADOBE IS SO STUPID! ADOBE IS SO STUPID! ADOBE IS SO STUPID! ADOBE IS SO STUPID! ADOBE IS SO STUPID! ADOBE IS SO STUPID!

shri

I am new to actionscript & was assuming that there is something wrong with how I was trying to parse the XML...But after countless hours of work, I found this article, copied the function & life is good. Thanks for sharing...

medford

Thank you very much Craig, I emailed you my code.

Craig Kaminsky

@Jeff: I'm on and offline a bit this weekend but please do feel free to post some code or email me the code, if that's easier/better for you. My email is craig.kaminsky at gmail dot com. I'll be checking back tomorrow in case you have time this weekend.

To try and answer your initial question in the comment, the function I have will return the XML document with all that namespace crap pulled out of it. So, if the root element of your XML document is 'reportHistory' then yes, that's essentially what you'll get back (reportHistory.someOtherElement.andSoOn.

Code will probably make it a lot easier to explain tho :)!

medford

Hi Craig,
I believe this post has ended my many hours/days of dealing with namespaces. I am doing a simple HTTPService request but what I am recieving back is a namespace nightmare - from your example above, after I pass the result through these functions, is reportHistory what I will be able to create as an XMLList that is bindable in Flex? Is that the finished result? Thank you again for this post, I could send a quick snippet of the XML I am working with if you a second to look at it. Thanks again.

-Jeff

Craig Kaminsky

@Gord: So glad to know that the cleaner class helped you out! Thank you very much for letting me know it helped.

Cheers, Craig

Anonymous

Craig,
You are so right. I fought for a day with namespace based XML in my Flex program. Finally stuffed in the removeNamspaces function into my program and life was easy again.

Cheers,
Gord

Flex Utility Class for Removing Namespaces

I should have added this code to my previous post on clearing namespaces out of XML. Instead of editing that post, which was plenty long, I am opting to just post the class and usage example here. A link to the sample project, and its source code, located at the end of the post.

Utility Class

public class NamespaceRemover
{
 public static const NAME:String = "NamespaceRemover";

 public function NamespaceRemover(){}
 
 public static function removeNamespaces( xml:XML ):XML
 {
  var cleanXML:XML;
  var xmlSource:String;
  
  xmlSource = xml.toXMLString();   
  xmlSource = xmlSource.replace(/<[^!?]?[^>]+?>/g, cleanXMLNamespaces);
  
  cleanXML = XML(xmlSource)
  
  return cleanXML;
 }
 
 private static function cleanXMLNamespaces(...rest):String
 {
     rest[0] = rest[0].replace(/xmlns[^"]+\"[^"]+\"/g, "");
     var attrs:Array = rest[0].match(/\"[^"]*\"/g);
     rest[0] = rest[0].replace(/\"[^"]*\"/g, "%attribute value%");
     rest[0] = rest[0].replace(/(<\/?|\s)\w+\:/g, "$1");
     while (rest[0].indexOf("%attribute value%") > 0)
     {
         rest[0] = rest[0].replace("%attribute value%", attrs.shift());
     }
     return rest[0];
 }
 
}

I decided to make both of the methods in this class static. This way it can be used as a class, without instantiation (see Usage sample below). I didn't see any reason to waste the extra typing needed to create an instance of the class and then invoke the method to remove namespaces.

Usage
The following code snippet is from a recent PureMVC-Flex application on which I am working (slightly altered for readability, etc.).

import NamespaceRemover;
private function reportHistoryReceived( evt:ResultEvent ):void
{
 var dsReport:XMLList;
 var reportHistoryXML:XMLList;
 var xml:XML;
 var item:XML;
 var reportHistory:ReportHistory;
 var acReportHistory:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection();
 
 xml = NamespaceRemover.removeNamespaces( evt.result[0] as XML );
 dsReport = xml..*::DsReport;
 reportHistoryXML = dsReport.children();   
 
 for each( item in reportHistoryXML )
 {
 // build up an ArrayCollection of ReportHistory objects 
  reportHistory = new ReportHistory();
  reportHistory.Field0 = item.Field0;
  reportHistory.Field1 = item.Field1;
  // add to AC
  acReportHistory.addItem( reportHistory );
 } 
 
 // send a notification, passing the AC along for the ride
 sendNotification( ApplicationFacade.REPORT_HISTORY_RECEIVED, acReportHistory );
}

I've created and uploaded a sample application that utilizes a free stock quote web service. The sample has source code enabled (right-click on the app's web page and select View Source). It's available at: http://www.baddogsconsulting.com/projects/namespaceremover/.

Please note that I am using a free web service and, sometimes, it goes offline/down. The Web Service I'm using is:
http://www.webservicex.net/stockquote.asmx?wsdl

You can download the code, change the line with this WSDL location to any other one you want, and recompile the application if you so desire.

Also note that the Get Quote button will not be enabled unless the WSDL loads. If it doesn't enable, the Web Service must still be unavailable (all web services at this site have been taking a while to load this morning, Thursday, May 7). Of course, the purpose was less of "using it" and more to show the source code for an example application using the NnamespaceRemove utility.

ColdFusion Email Verification Utility

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Craig Kaminsky

ColdFusion Email Verification Utility

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