README.md

Email Verification Library for PHP

Kickbox determines if an email address is not only valid, but associated with a actual user. Uses include:

• Preventing users from creating accounts on your applications using fake, misspelled, or throw-away email addresses.
• Reducing bounces by removing old, invalid, and low quality email addresses from your mailing lists.
• Saving money and projecting your reputation by only sending to real email users.

Getting Started

To begin, hop over to kickbox.com and create a free account. Once you've signed up and logged in, click on API Settings and then click Add API Key. Take note of the generated API Key - you'll need it to setup the client as explained below.

Installation

Make sure you have composer installed.

Add the following to your composer.json

{
    "require": {
        "kickbox/kickbox": "*"
    }
}

Update your dependencies

$ php composer.phar update

This package follows the PSR-0 convention names for its classes, which means you can easily integrate these classes loading in your own autoloader.

Versions

Works with [ 5.4 / 5.5 ]

Usage

<?php

// This file is generated by Composer
require_once 'vendor/autoload.php';

$client   = new Kickbox\Client('Your_API_Key_Here');
$kickbox  = $client->kickbox();

try {
  $response = $kickbox->verify("test@example.com");
}
catch (Exception $e) {
  echo "Code: " . $e->getCode() . " Message: " . $e->getMessage();
}

Options

timeout integer (optional) - Maximum time, in milliseconds, for the API to complete a verification request. Default: 6000.

// Example with options
$response = $kickbox->verify("test@example.com", array('timeout' => 6000));

Response information

A successful API call responds with the following values:

• result string - The verification result: deliverable, undeliverable, risky, unknown
• reason string - The reason for the result. Possible reasons are:
  • invalid_email - Specified email is not a valid email address syntax
  • invalid_domain - Domain for email does not exist
  • rejected_email - Email address was rejected by the SMTP server, email address does not exist
  • accepted_email - Email address was accepted by the SMTP server
  • low_quality - Email address has quality issues that may make it a risky or low-value address
  • low_deliverability - Email address appears to be deliverable, but deliverability cannot be guaranteed
  • no_connect - Could not connect to SMTP server
  • timeout - SMTP session timed out
  • invalid_smtp - SMTP server returned an unexpected/invalid response
  • unavailable_smtp - SMTP server was unavailable to process our request
  • unexpected_error - An unexpected error has occurred
• role true | false - true if the email address is a role address (postmaster@example.com, support@example.com, etc)
• free true | false - true if the email address uses a free email service like gmail.com or yahoo.com.
• disposable true | false - true if the email address uses a disposable domain like trashmail.com or mailinator.com.
• accept_all true | false - true if the email was accepted, but the domain appears to accept all emails addressed to that domain.
• did_you_mean null | string - Returns a suggested email if a possible spelling error was detected. (bill.lumbergh@gamil.com -> bill.lumbergh@gmail.com)
• sendex float - A quality score of the provided email address ranging between 0 (no quality) and 1 (perfect quality). More information on the Sendex Score can be found here.
• email string - Returns a normalized version of the provided email address. (BoB@example.com -> bob@example.com)
• user string - The user (a.k.a local part) of the provided email address. (bob@example.com -> bob)
• domain string - The domain of the provided email address. (bob@example.com -> example.com)
• success true | false - true if the API request was successful (i.e., no authentication or unexpected errors occurred)

An example response would look like:

$response = $kickbox->verify('test@example.com');
var_dump($response);

//Below is an example of what the var_dump($response) looks like:

class Kickbox\HttpClient\Response#29 (3) {
  public $body =>
  array(13) {
    'result' =>
    string(11) "deliverable"
    'reason' =>
    string(14) "accepted_email"
    'role' =>
    bool(false)
    'free' =>
    bool(true)
    'disposable' =>
    bool(false)
    'accept_all' =>
    bool(false)
    'did_you_mean' =>
    NULL
    'sendex' =>
    int(1)
    'email' =>
    string(20) "test@example.com"
    'user' =>
    string(9) "test"
    'domain' =>
    string(10) "example.com"
    'success' =>
    bool(true)
    'message' =>
    NULL
  }
  public $code =>
  int(200)
  public $headers =>
  class Guzzle\Http\Message\Header\HeaderCollection#40 (1) {
    protected $headers =>
    array(11) {
      'server' =>
      class Guzzle\Http\Message\Header#41 (3) {
        ...
      }
      'date' =>
      class Guzzle\Http\Message\Header#42 (3) {
        ...
      }
      'content-type' =>
      class Guzzle\Http\Message\Header#43 (3) {
        ...
      }
      'content-length' =>
      class Guzzle\Http\Message\Header#44 (3) {
        ...
      }
      'connection' =>
      class Guzzle\Http\Message\Header#45 (3) {
        ...
      }
      'cache-control' =>
      class Guzzle\Http\Message\Header\CacheControl#46 (4) {
        ...
      }
      'pragma' =>
      class Guzzle\Http\Message\Header#47 (3) {
        ...
      }
      'expires' =>
      class Guzzle\Http\Message\Header#48 (3) {
        ...
      }
      'x-kickbox-balance' =>
      class Guzzle\Http\Message\Header#49 (3) {
        ...
      }
      'set-cookie' =>
      class Guzzle\Http\Message\Header#50 (3) {
        ...
      }
      'x-kickbox-response-time' =>
      class Guzzle\Http\Message\Header#51 (3) {
        ...
      }
    }
  }
}

Response headers

Along with each response, the following HTTP headers are included:

• X-Kickbox-Balance - Your remaining verification credit balance (Daily + On Demand).
• X-Kickbox-Response-Time - The elapsed time (in milliseconds) it took Kickbox to process the request.

License

MIT

Bug Reports

Report here.

Need Help?

help@kickbox.com