We are proud to announce the release of aspNetMX 3.0. This version has been a while in the making. It has a number of new notable features. Easily the biggest in the new MailBoxChecker class, that provides multithreaded functionality for mailbox checking.

Here is a listing of the new features.

New Multi-Threaded MailboxChecker Class
Probably the biggest feature added to aspNetMX is the MailboxChecker class. This is a multithread class, loaded with configurable options, to check millions of email addresses. The MailboxChecker class will check email addresses all the way to the mailbox level, in a mult-threaded environment, with built in throttling. If you need to validate 10,000 emails or 1,000,000 emails, this is the class for you.

New Licensing System
Starting with version 3.0, aspNetMX now uses a simple license key system. We've heard developers feedback, to get away from license files. Now, using a simple key, you can enable aspNetMX in your applications. When moving from server to server, you no longer have to worry about license files being left behind.

Extended the EmailValidator Web Validation Control
We've extended this validation control Additional new features allow you to check the last level of validation achieved, along with ignoring empty email addresses, and accessing the in-memory log.

Move Syntax Validation Options
In previous versions of aspNetMX, the email address syntax was simply checked by using complicated regular expressions. This allowed for edge case email address formats to be incorrectly discarded. New options allow you to select which set of rules you want to implement when syntactically validating email addresses.

Timed Validation Options
aspNetMX now includes the option for timed validation. This option allows the developer to attempt to validate the email address in a set number of milliseconds (configurable by the developer). No longer do you have to wait for unresponsive DNS or Mail servers before you get a result back.

Greylisting
aspNetMX now includes the option to check for greylisting validation. Mail servers that implement greylisting can be flagged, and then marked for later follow-up.

Proxy Server Functionality
aspNetMX now has support for proxy servers. Configure the MXProxy class for email validation from behing SOCKS proxies.

Better COM/ASP Support
aspNetMX now supports COM and classic ASP environments. Wrapper classes make it easier to call methods, that normally wouldn't be available to the COM world.

** NOTE: ALL OF OUR PRODUCTS RUN ON ALL VERSIONS OF .NET. **

The instructions below are for people using VS2010 and beyond.

                                                        --------------------------

As more and more people are upgrading to VS2010, and beyond, I am getting more of the following emails:

aspNetEmail (or any of our other products) doesn't work in later versions of Visual Studio. I usually get one of the following errors:

"aspNetEmail is not declared, it may be inaccessible due to its protection level."

Or

"The referenced assembly "…" could not be resolved because it has a dependency upon System.Web (or some other internal .NET namespace).  Please remove references to assemblies not in the targeted framework or consider retargeting your project"

Usually these exceptions occur when the developer is building a client side application.

Starting in VS2010, VS tries to be too smart for it's own good.  When you build a client application (console.exe, winform, etc…) VS limits the number of namespaces you need access too, because it thinks you shouldn't need them.

To change this behavior, what you need to do, is change the target framework from a subset of namespaces, to all of them.

To change this, in VS.NET Solution Explorer, Right-Click on  your project, an select Properties.
 
On the Application tab, set the Target Framework to be ".NET Framework XX". By default it is set to ".NET Framework XX Client Profile".  Press Ctrl-S for save, and you are done.

Below are 2 pictures that display changing the target framework.

As always, if anyone has any questions, feel free to contact me.

Thanks!
Dave Wanta

C# Screenshot:

VB.NET Screenshot (this option is found under the Compile tab. Then, click the "Advanced Compile Option" button.

I recently received a request about how to validate an email addresses, using aspNetMX, and set a timeout (thanks Coşkun)

To use aspNetMX, and specify a timeout, you need to use one of the following techniques.

If you are using a newer version of aspNetMX you will need to call the new overloaded Validate method. For example:
  

	string emailText = "test@example.com";
	MXValidate mx = new MXValidate();
	bool timedOut = false;
	MXValidateLevel level = mx.Validate( emailText, MXValidateLevel.Mailbox, 1000, out timedOut );

	If( timedOut )
	{
	
	  //record the validation timed out
	}
	else
	{
	   //record the validation did NOT time out
	}

If you are using an older version of aspNetMX, you can still do this. However, it will require a bit more programming. You will need to wrap the Validate method in an asynchronous call.  Here is a code example that demonstrates this.

bool TimedValidation( int methodTimeout, string emailAddress, MXValidateLevel maxValidation, out MXValidateLevel result )
{
	MXValidate mx = new MXValidate();
	bool success = false;
	result = MXValidateLevel.NotValid;
	


	IAsyncResult asyncResult = mx.BeginValidate( emailAddress, maxValidation, null, null);
		try
		{
			asyncResult.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne( methodTimeout, false);
			if (!asyncResult.IsCompleted)
			{
				success = false;
				return success;
			}
			else
			{
				//we were successful
				success = true;
				result = mx.EndValidate( asyncResult );
			}
		}
		catch (Exception ex)
		{
			//Log any exceptions here...
			Console.WriteLine( ex.ToString() );
		}

	return success;
}

In that example, you are passing in a parameter called methodTimeout. This is the number of milliseconds to wait until the Validate method times out.

As always, if anyone has any questions, feel free to contact me, over at the ContactUs page.

Thanks!
Dave Wanta