Java Email Address class
UPDATE: This Java class was updated on February 1st, 2008 to account for domain literals and quoted strings such as “John Smith” <john.smith@somewhere.com>. It is now effectively the only complete and semantically correct email validator for Java.
PETTY REQUEST: The update required considerably more effort than the original as it now accounts for all valid RFC parsing conditions. Because of this, and that this page is easily my most visited, I’d appreciate it if you could show your appreciation by hooking a brother up and clicking on some ads. It helps pay for my hosting. Thanks!
I’m writing a new open source CMS (Community Management System) based entirely on the Spring Framework and Hibernate.
This CMS will take many cues from Drupal and other PHP based CMS systems, but be far more flexible, have fantastic OO and design pattern architectures and be a benefit to the Java Enterprise software community. I’ve decided to abandon JSR-168 support - I want a much cleaner, easier to implement, OO-based and typesafe “plugin” support framework - which I’m working on now. Suffice it to say I’m not a fan of JSR-168, but that’s a whole ‘nuther post.
Anyway, In this CMS, I’m using time-honored OO classes I’ve used on many many projects. One such is the EmailAddress class that I’ve referenced in earlier posts in this blog for email address validation. I’ve gotten some good feedback on this class, so I thought I’d just post the whole thing in case anyone wants to benefit from it (instead of just using code chunks I’ve posted before).
Here it is:
/*
* Copyright 2008 Les Hazlewood
*
* Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
* you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
* You may obtain a copy of the License at
*
* http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
*
* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
* distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
* WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
* See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
* limitations under the License.
*/
import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
/**
* An email address represents the textual string of an
* <a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2822.txt">RFC 2822</a> email address and other corresponding
* information of interest.
*
* <p>If you use this code, please keep the author information in tact and reference
* my site at <a href="http://www.leshazlewood.com">leshazlewood.com</a>. Thanks!
*
* @author Les Hazlewood
*/
public class EmailAddress implements Serializable {
/**
* This constant states that domain literals are allowed in the email address, e.g.:
*
* <p><tt>someone@[192.168.1.100]</tt> or <br/>
* <tt>john.doe@[23:33:A2:22:16:1F]</tt> or <br/>
* <tt>me@[my computer]</tt></p>
*
* <p>The RFC says these are valid email addresses, but most people don't like allowing them.
* If you don't want to allow them, and only want to allow valid domain names
* (<a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1035.txt">RFC 1035</a>, x.y.z.com, etc),
* change this constant to <tt>false</tt>.
*
* <p>Its default value is <tt>true</tt> to remain RFC 2822 compliant, but
* you should set it depending on what you need for your application.
*/
private static final boolean ALLOW_DOMAIN_LITERALS = true;
/**
* This contstant states that quoted identifiers are allowed
* (using quotes and angle brackets around the raw address) are allowed, e.g.:
*
* <p><tt>"John Smith" <john.smith@somewhere.com></tt>
*
* <p>The RFC says this is a valid mailbox. If you don't want to
* allow this, because for example, you only want users to enter in
* a raw address (<tt>john.smith@somewhere.com</tt> - no quotes or angle
* brackets), then change this constant to <tt>false</tt>.
*
* <p>Its default value is <tt>true</tt> to remain RFC 2822 compliant, but
* you should set it depending on what you need for your application.
*/
private static final boolean ALLOW_QUOTED_IDENTIFIERS = true;
// RFC 2822 2.2.2 Structured Header Field Bodies
private static final String wsp = "[ \\t]"; //space or tab
private static final String fwsp = wsp + "*";
//RFC 2822 3.2.1 Primitive tokens
private static final String dquote = "\\\"";
//ASCII Control characters excluding white space:
private static final String noWsCtl = "\\x01-\\x08\\x0B\\x0C\\x0E-\\x1F\\x7F";
//all ASCII characters except CR and LF:
private static final String asciiText = "[\\x01-\\x09\\x0B\\x0C\\x0E-\\x7F]";
// RFC 2822 3.2.2 Quoted characters:
//single backslash followed by a text char
private static final String quotedPair = "(\\\\" + asciiText + ")";
//RFC 2822 3.2.4 Atom:
private static final String atext = "[a-zA-Z0-9\\!\\#\\$\\%\\&\\'\\*\\+\\-\\/\\=\\?\\^\\_\\`\\{\\|\\}\\~]";
private static final String atom = fwsp + atext + "+" + fwsp;
private static final String dotAtomText = atext + "+" + "(" + "\\." + atext + "+)*";
private static final String dotAtom = fwsp + "(" + dotAtomText + ")" + fwsp;
//RFC 2822 3.2.5 Quoted strings:
//noWsCtl and the rest of ASCII except the doublequote and backslash characters:
private static final String qtext = "[" + noWsCtl + "\\x21\\x23-\\x5B\\x5D-\\x7E]";
private static final String qcontent = "(" + qtext + "|" + quotedPair + ")";
private static final String quotedString = dquote + "(" + fwsp + qcontent + ")*" + fwsp + dquote;
//RFC 2822 3.2.6 Miscellaneous tokens
private static final String word = "((" + atom + ")|(" + quotedString + "))";
private static final String phrase = word + "+"; //one or more words.
//RFC 1035 tokens for domain names:
private static final String letter = "[a-zA-Z]";
private static final String letDig = "[a-zA-Z0-9]";
private static final String letDigHyp = "[a-zA-Z0-9-]";
private static final String rfcLabel = letDig + "(" + letDigHyp + "{0,61}" + letDig + ")?";
private static final String rfc1035DomainName = rfcLabel + "(\\." + rfcLabel + ")*\\." + letter + "{2,6}";
//RFC 2822 3.4 Address specification
//domain text - non white space controls and the rest of ASCII chars not including [, ], or \:
private static final String dtext = "[" + noWsCtl + "\\x21-\\x5A\\x5E-\\x7E]";
private static final String dcontent = dtext + "|" + quotedPair;
private static final String domainLiteral = "\\[" + "(" + fwsp + dcontent + "+)*" + fwsp + "\\]";
private static final String rfc2822Domain = "(" + dotAtom + "|" + domainLiteral + ")";
private static final String domain = ALLOW_DOMAIN_LITERALS ? rfc2822Domain : rfc1035DomainName;
private static final String localPart = "((" + dotAtom + ")|(" + quotedString + "))";
private static final String addrSpec = localPart + "@" + domain;
private static final String angleAddr = "<" + addrSpec + ">";
private static final String nameAddr = "(" + phrase + ")?" + fwsp + angleAddr;
private static final String mailbox = nameAddr + "|" + addrSpec;
//now compile a pattern for efficient re-use:
//if we're allowing quoted identifiers or not:
private static final String patternString = ALLOW_QUOTED_IDENTIFIERS ? mailbox : addrSpec;
public static final Pattern VALID_PATTERN = Pattern.compile(patternString);
//class attributes
private String text;
private boolean bouncing = true;
private boolean verified = false;
private String label;
public EmailAddress() {
super();
}
public EmailAddress(String text) {
super();
setText(text);
}
/**
* Returns the actual email address string, e.g. <tt>someone@somewhere.com</tt>
*
* @return the actual email address string.
*/
public String getText() {
return text;
}
public void setText(String text) {
this.text = text;
}
/**
* Returns whether or not any emails sent to this email address come back as bounced
* (undeliverable).
*
* <p>Default is <tt>false</tt> for convenience's sake - if a bounced message is ever received for this
* address, this value should be set to <tt>true</tt> until verification can made.
*
* @return whether or not any emails sent to this email address come back as bounced
* (undeliverable).
*/
public boolean isBouncing() {
return bouncing;
}
public void setBouncing(boolean bouncing) {
this.bouncing = bouncing;
}
/**
* Returns whether or not the party associated with this email has verified that it is
* their email address.
*
* <p>Verification is usually done by sending an email to this
* address and waiting for the party to respond or click a specific link in the email.
*
* <p>Default is <tt>false</tt>.
*
* @return whether or not the party associated with this email has verified that it is
* their email address.
*/
public boolean isVerified() {
return verified;
}
public void setVerified(boolean verified) {
this.verified = verified;
}
/**
* Party label associated with this address, for example, 'Home', 'Work', etc.
*
* @return a label associated with this address, for example 'Home', 'Work', etc.
*/
public String getLabel() {
return label;
}
public void setLabel(String label) {
this.label = label;
}
/**
* Returns whether or not the text represented by this object instance is valid
* according to the <tt>RFC 2822</tt> rules.
*
* @return true if the text represented by this instance is valid according
* to RFC 2822, false otherwise.
*/
public boolean isValid() {
return isValidText(getText());
}
/**
* Utility method that checks to see if the specified string is a valid
* email address according to the * RFC 2822 specification.
*
* @param email the email address string to test for validity.
* @return true if the given text valid according to RFC 2822, false otherwise.
*/
public static boolean isValidText(String email) {
return (email != null) && VALID_PATTERN.matcher(email).matches();
}
public boolean equals(Object o) {
if (o instanceof EmailAddress) {
EmailAddress ea = (EmailAddress) o;
return getText().equals(ea.getText());
}
return false;
}
public int hashCode() {
return getText().hashCode();
}
public String toString() {
return getText();
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
String addy = "\"John Smith\" <john.smith@u.washington.edu>";
if (isValidText(addy)) {
System.out.println("Valid email address.");
} else {
System.out.println("Invalid email address!");
}
}
}
