Email validation is the process of ensuring that an email address meets certain standards, such as being correctly formatted and free of any errors, before it can be used to send messages. Email validation API documentation allows developers to create applications that perform this process and return a valid or invalid result for the specified address. There are many different email validation tools available, but not all are created equal. The best ones are easy to use, provide detailed error reporting, and allow for a maximum number of addresses to be verified per request. The following are some of the most popular options:
Mailboxlayer is a great option for email validation API documentation, as it provides its customers with everything they need to get started. In addition to extensive and thorough documentation, the platform also offers various examples and errors that can be used for reference purposes. This makes it easier for developers to understand and utilize the API.
The email validation API by Infobip is another good choice for those looking for detailed documentation. This API supports both JSON and XML output, making it easier for developers to work with either type of data. Its API also supports bulk verification, allowing users to verify a list of email addresses in one go. Additionally, it can detect duplicates and remove them from the list of valid email addresses.
In order to submit a single email address for validation, an API consumer must specify the id of the email address for which they want a result and the index of that entry in the list of validated results. The id is unique to each validation job and the index is a zero-based integer that represents the entry in the list of results for which a result is requested.
For larger lists of email addresses, an API consumer can instead specify a file to be uploaded as the source for the validation job. To do so, they must set the request’s main Content-Type header to multipart/form-data and pass a part named inputFile along with the MIME type of the uploaded file. The resulting multipart/form-data will contain the results of the validation job, including a part for each validated entry called name.
Each result contains a string describing the outcome of the verification for the specific email address, and a list of possible reasons for this outcome. The most common reasons are deliverable, undeliverable, do_not_send, catch_all and unknown.
A 114 reply indicates that the check could not be completed within the request timeout period, as the mail server is unavailable at the moment or it may implement Greylisting to slow down the delivery of spam emails. In this case, the API would recommend retrying the address in question every 5-20 minutes until a valid or invalid result is obtained. To prevent this from happening, it is advisable to run validation jobs with larger lists of addresses. This will reduce the number of requests made to the API and help ensure short response times for customers providing online services or running call centers.