Email Verification Library for Ruby

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 rubygems installed

$ gem install kickbox

Versions

Works with [ 1.9.* / 2.* ]

Usage

require "kickbox"

client   = Kickbox::Client.new('Your_API_Key_Here')
kickbox  = client.kickbox()
response = kickbox.verify("test@example.com")

verify returns a Kickbox::HttpClient::Response which has a body attribute which contains the deserialized JSON.

You can use it like this:

response.body['result'] #=> "deliverable"
response.body['reason'] #=>  "accepted_email"

Full response information is provided below

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", { "timeout" => 60000 })

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)

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