An extensible email validation library for PHP 7+

The aim of this library is to offer a more detailed email validation report than simply checking if an email is the valid format, and also to make it possible to easily add custom validations.

Currently this tool checks the following:

Validation	Description
MX records	Checks if the email's domain has valid MX records
Valid format	Validates e-mail addresses against the syntax in RFC 822, with the exceptions that comments and whitespace folding and dotless domain names are not supported (as it uses PHP's filter_var()).
Email Host	Checks if the email's host (e.g gmail.com) is reachable
Role/Business Email^	Checks if the email is a role/business based email (e.g [email protected]).
Disposable email provider^	Checks if the email is a disposable email (e.g [email protected]).
Free email provider^	Checks if the email is a free email (e.g [email protected]).
Misspelled Email ^	Checks the email for possible typos and returns a suggested correction (e.g [email protected] -> [email protected]).

^ Data used for these checks can be found here

Installation

composer require daveearley/daves-email-validation-tool

Usage

Quick Start

// Include the composer autoloader
require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

$validator = EmailValidation\EmailValidatorFactory::create('[email protected]');

$jsonResult = $validator->getValidationResults()->asJson();
$arrayResult = $validator->getValidationResults()->asArray();

echo $jsonResult;

Expected output:

{
"valid_format": true,
"valid_mx_records": false,
"possible_email_correction": "[email protected]",
"free_email_provider": false,
"disposable_email_provider": false,
"role_or_business_email": false,
"valid_host": false
}

Adding Custom Validations

To add a custom validation simply extend the EmailValidation\Validations\Validator class and implement the getResultResponse() and getValidatorName() methods. You then register the validation using the EmailValidation\EmailValidator->registerValidator() method.

Example code

// Validations/GmailValidator.php

<?php

namespace EmailValidation\Validations;

class GmailValidator extends Validator
{
    public function getValidatorName(): string
    {
        return 'is_gmail';
    }

    public function getResultResponse(): bool
    {
        $hostName = $this->getEmailAddress()->getHostPart();
        return strpos($hostName, 'gmail.com') !== false;
    }
}

// file-where-you-are-doing-your-validation.php

<?php

use EmailValidation\Validations\GmailValidator;

require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

$validator = EmailValidation\EmailValidatorFactory::create('[email protected]');

$validator->registerValidator(new GmailValidator());

echo $validator->getValidationResults()->asJson();

The expected output will be:

{
"is_gmail": true,
"valid_format": true,
"valid_mx_records": false,
"possible_email_correction": "",
"free_email_provider": true,
"disposable_email_provider": false,
"role_or_business_email": false,
"valid_host": false
}

Running in Docker

You can easily validate over HTTP using docker. To get docker working run

docker-compose up -d 

in the repository root. You can then validate an email by navigating to http://localhost:[email protected]. The result will be JSON string as per above.

Adding a custom data source

You can create your own data provider by creating a data provider class which implements the EmailValidation\EmailDataProviderInterface.

Example Code:

<?php

declare(strict_types=1);

namespace EmailValidation;

class CustomEmailDataProvider implements EmailDataProviderInterface
{
    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     */
    public function getEmailProviders(): array
    {
        return ['custom.com'];
    }

    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     */
    public function getTopLevelDomains(): array
    {
        return ['custom'];
    }

    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     */
    public function getDisposableEmailProviders(): array
    {
        return ['custom.com', 'another.com'];
    }

    /**
     * {@inheritdoc}
     */
    public function getRoleEmailPrefixes(): array
    {
        return ['custom'];
    }
}

FAQ

Is this validation accurate?

No, none of these tests are 100% accurate. As with any email validation there will always be false positives & negatives. The only way to guarantee an email is valid is to send an email and solicit a response. However, this library is still useful for detecting disposable emails etc., and also acts as a good first line of defence.

Can I manually update the disposable email provider data?

Yes, this project relies on this great repository for its list of disposable email providers. To fetch the latest list from that repo you can run

./scripts/update-dispsable-email-providers.php

from the command line. This will fetch the data and save it to ./src/data/disposable-email-providers.php