Tim Williams wrote: > On 28/09/2007, Robin Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Is there a way to use smtplib to get recipient validation. I can use smtplib >> quite happily to send emails using the locahost's sendmail, but sendmail is >> just >> fire and forget, so some bad addresses eg [EMAIL PROTECTED] don't cause any >> error in the sending application. I know some smtp setups do enforce >> recipient >> validation, but it doesn't seem terribly easy to do this with sendmail. I >> wondered if there were some way to do this in python? > > There is no way of validating *every* email address you send to using > SMTP alone. Some servers accept every address and bounce later - as > you have found out. So for the purpose of the SMTP client, or relaying > server, the address is valid at sending time to those servers. > > Checking DNS for MX records is a possibility for removing some bad > addresses, but it's not fool proof as the RFCs don't require MX > records to exist for a domain to be able to receive email. If no MX > records are present, one (and only one!) IP address returned from the > domain's A record(s) should be tried. > > HTH :) Thanks, it's at least ammunition for me to say it cannot easily be done. I found this milter
http://www.jmaimon.com/sendmail/callahead-milter/ but I think this will cause every send to be checked which is probably not what we need. -- Robin Becker -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
