How to check if an email address is real or valid using PHP

Question

I found some websites that claim to verify if email addresses are valid  Is it possible to check if an email address is valid using just PHP     lt  php     if   POST  email                      The email to validate          email     POST  email                An optional sender         function domain exists  email   record    MX                list  user   domain    explode       email               return checkdnsrr  domain   record                     if domain exists  email                 echo  This MX records exists  I will accept this email as valid                       else               echo  No MX record exists   Invalid email                       gt   lt form method  POST  gt       lt input type  text  name  email  gt       lt input type  submit  value  submit  gt   lt  form gt    This is what I have right now  It checks if the domain exist  but it cannot check if the user s email exist on that domain  Is it possible to do that using PHP

User · Answer

You should check with SMTP   That means you have to connect to that email s SMTP server   After connecting to the SMTP server you should send these commands   HELO somehostname com MAIL FROM   lt no-reply gmail com gt  RCPT TO   lt emailtovalidate domain com gt    If you get   lt emailtovalidate domain com gt  Relay access denied  that means this email is Invalid   There is a simple PHP class  You can use it   http   www phpclasses org package 6650-PHP-Check-if-an-e-mail-is-valid-using-SMTP html

User · Answer

I have been searching for this same answer all morning and have pretty much found out that it s probably impossible to verify if every email address you ever need to check actually exists at the time you need to verify it  So as a work around  I kind of created a simple PHP script to verify that the email address is formatted correct and it also verifies that the domain name used is correct as well   GitHub here https   github com DukeOfMarshall PHP---JSON-Email-Verification tree master   lt  php    What to do if the class is being called directly and not being included in a script     via PHP   This allows the class script to be called via other methods like JavaScript  if basename   FILE       basename   SERVER  SCRIPT FILENAME       return array   array     if   GET  address to verify             isset   GET  address to verify           return array  error                  1       return array  message                 No email address was submitted for verification        return array  domain verified        0       return array  format verified        0   else       verify   new EmailVerify         if  verify- gt verify formatting   GET  address to verify               return array  format verified        1           if  verify- gt verify domain   GET  address to verify                   return array  error                  0               return array  domain verified        1               return array  message                 Formatting and domain have been verified            else               return array  error                  1               return array  domain verified        0               return array  message                 Formatting was verified  but verification of the domain has failed                  else           return array  error                  1           return array  domain verified        0           return array  format verified        0           return array  message                 Email was not formatted correctly            echo json encode  return array    exit       class EmailVerify   public function   construct        public function verify domain  address to verify          an optional sender        record    MX       list  user   domain    explode       address to verify       return checkdnsrr  domain   record      public function verify formatting  address to verify       if strstr  address to verify          FALSE           return false       else          list  user   domain    explode       address to verify            if strstr  domain          FALSE               return false           else              return true                            gt

User · Answer

You can t verify  with enough accuracy to rely on  if an email actually exists using just a single PHP method  You can send an email to that account  but even that alone won t verify the account exists  see below   You can  at least  verify it s at least formatted like one  if filter var  email  FILTER VALIDATE EMAIL           Email is valid     You can add another check if you want  Parse the domain out and then run checkdnsrr  if checkdnsrr  domain             Domain at least has an MX record  necessary to receive email     Many people get to this point and are still unconvinced there s not some hidden method out there  Here are some notes for you to consider if you re bound and determined to validate email    Spammers also know the  connection trick   where you start to send an email and rely on the server to bounce back at that point   One of the other answers links to this library which has this caveat     Some mail servers will silently reject the test message  to prevent spammers from checking against their users  emails and filter the valid emails  so this function might not work properly with all mail servers    In other words  if there s an invalid address you might not get an invalid address response  In fact  virtually all mail servers come with an option to accept all incoming mail  here s how to do it with Postfix    The answer linking to the validation library neglects to mention that caveat  Spam blacklists  They blacklist by IP address and if your server is constantly doing verification connections you run the risk of winding up on Spamhaus or another block list  If you get blacklisted  what good does it do you to validate the email address  If it s really that important to verify an email address  the accepted way is to force the user to respond to an email  Send them a full email with a link they have to click to be verified  It s not spammy  and you re guaranteed that any responses have a valid address

[php] How to check if an email address is real or valid using PHP

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