I couldn't find anything here about verifying email addresses… So, here I am turning to the experts:

I, maybe we all, need a way to verify email addresses BEFORE they are included in a dynamic distribution list (DDL)for ReportCaster jobs. ReportCaster jobs do fail due to invalid email addresses in the associated DDL, and rightfully so. So, I'm looking for a way to validate email addresses, ..."sort of link checking the return code of a "ping" to a URL (if that's possible), before adding them in the DDL.

Is there such a methodology available within a fex? Or, is this a NFR?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Doug,

Email addresses must have an [something] then a '@' and [something] and cannot contain spaces. You could set up a DEFINE to test the Email Address field to insure it meets these minimums.

 
DEFINE FILE EMAILLIST
TEST1/A1 = IF EMAIL_ADDRESS CONTAINS '@' THEN 'Y' ELSE 'N';
TEST1/A1 = IF EMAIL_ADDRESS CONTAINS '' THEN 'N' ELSE 'Y';
TEST3/A1 = Add other tests that you may require;
VALID/A1 = IF (TEST1 EQ 'Y') AND (TEST2 EQ 'Y') THEN 'Y' ELSE 'N';
END
 

Then add a WHERE clause to your code.
WHERE VALID EQ 'Y';

If you need to test for every element of the email address to validate it then look up RFC 2822. This is the standard by which email addresses must be structured to be valid. Or you can set up a validation test before your addresses are added to your DB.

That's OK for checking the synatx / format of the email address. However, I need to know if it's a valid email address recipient: smtp, etc.

As mentioned above: ..."sort of link checking the return code of a "ping" to a URL"...

I doubt there's a way for you to check for that kind of validity on the fly. You can ping a domain using a DOS or UNIX command and get the reply data returned. Pinging an email address returns a host not found message.

Unfortunately that wouldn't work for my application as I'm sure the domain is always there: DollarGeneral.com, and I'm in that domain.

You can use EDAMAIL to send a test message to check that an email address is correct. Search the forum for "EDAMAIL". There are several good posts on the subject.

The EDAMAIL mechanism sounds like a pragmatic "internal" approach.
It is also "technically" possible without sending and email address. We met with a company here in South Africa recently that say that they do it as part of their address validation processes.
Via a web service one could possibly look at http://www.briteverify.com/

I do like "BriteVerify". But, I'd rather keep it in-house. I'll probably use a list (from HR?) with an "IN FILE"...