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Validators

EmailAddress Validator

Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress allows you to validate an email address. The validator first splits the email address on local-part @ hostname and attempts to match these against known specifications for email addresses and hostnames.

Basic Usage

A basic example of usage is below:

$validator = new Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress();

if ($validator->isValid($email)) {
    // email appears to be valid
} else {
    // email is invalid; print the reasons
    foreach ($validator->getMessages() as $message) {
        echo "$message\n";
    }
}

This will match the email address $email and on failure populate getMessages() with useful error messages.

Supported Options

Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress supports several options which can either be set at instantiation, by giving an array with the related options. The following options are supported:

  • allow: Defines which type of domain names are accepted. This option is used in conjunction with the hostnameValidator option to set the hostname validator. Possible values of this option defined in Hostname validator's ALLOW_* constants:

    • ALLOW_DNS (default) - Allows Internet domain names (e.g. example.com)
    • ALLOW_IP - Allows IP addresses (e.g. 192.168.0.1)
    • ALLOW_LOCAL - Allows local network such as localhost or www.localdomain
    • ALLOW_URI - Allows hostnames in URI generic syntax. See RFC 3986
    • ALLOW_ALL - Allows all types of hostnames

  • useDeepMxCheck: Defines if the servers MX records should be verified by a deep check. When this option is set to true then additionally to MX records also the A, A6 and AAAA records are used to verify if the server accepts emails. This option defaults to false.

  • useDomainCheck: Defines if the domain part should be checked. When this option is set to false, then only the local part of the email address will be checked. In this case the hostname validator will not be called. This option defaults to true.
  • hostnameValidator: Sets the hostname validator object instance with which the domain part of the email address will be validated.
  • useMxCheck: Defines if the MX records from the server should be detected. If this option is defined to true then the MX records are used to verify if the server accepts emails. This option defaults to false.

Complex local parts

Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress will match any valid email address according to RFC2822. For example, valid emails include bob@domain.com, bob+jones@domain.us, "bob@jones"@domain.com* and "bob jones"@domain.com

Some obsolete email formats will not currently validate (e.g. carriage returns or a \\ character in an email address).

Validating Only the Local Part

If you need Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress to check only the local part of an email address, and want to disable validation of the hostname, you can set the useDomainCheck option to false. This forces Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress not to validate the hostname part of the email address.

$validator = new Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress();
$validator->setOptions(['useDomainCheck' => false]);

Validating Different Types of Hostnames

The hostname part of an email address is validated against the Hostname validator. By default only DNS hostnames of the form domain.com are accepted, though if you wish you can accept IP addresses and Local hostnames too.

To do this you need to instantiate Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress passing a parameter to indicate the type of hostnames you want to accept. More details are included in the Laminas\Validator\Hostname documentation, though an example of how to accept both DNS and Local hostnames appears below:

use Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress;
use Laminas\Validator\Hostname;

$validator = new EmailAddress([
    'allow' => Hostname::ALLOW_DNS | Hostname::ALLOW_LOCAL 
]);

if ($validator->isValid($email)) {
    // email appears to be valid
} else {
    // email is invalid; print the reasons
    foreach ($validator->getMessages() as $message) {
        echo "$message\n";
    }
}

Checking If the Hostname Actually Accepts Email

Just because an email address is in the correct format, it doesn't necessarily mean that email address actually exists. To help solve this problem, you can use MX validation to check whether an MX (email) entry exists in the DNS record for the email's hostname. This tells you that the hostname accepts email, but doesn't tell you the exact email address itself is valid.

MX checking is not enabled by default. To enable MX checking you can pass a second parameter to the Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress constructor.

$validator = new Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress([
    'allow' => Laminas\Validator\Hostname::ALLOW_DNS,
    'useMxCheck' => true,
]);

By enabling this setting, network functions will be used to check for the presence of an MX record on the hostname of the email address you wish to validate. Please be aware this will likely slow your script down.

Sometimes validation for MX records returns false, even if emails are accepted. The reason behind this behaviour is, that servers can accept emails even if they do not provide a MX record. In this case they can provide A, A6, or AAAA records. To allow Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress to check also for these other records, you need to set deep MX validation. This can be done at initiation by setting the useDeepMxCheck option to true.

$validator = new Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress([
    'allow' => Laminas\Validator\Hostname::ALLOW_DNS,
    'useMxCheck' => true,
    'useDeepMxCheck' => true,
]);

Performance Warning

You should be aware that enabling MX check will slow down you script because of the used network functions. Enabling deep check will slow down your script even more as it searches the given server for 3 additional types.

Disallowed IP Addresses

You should note that MX validation is only accepted for external servers. When deep MX validation is enabled, then local IP addresses like 192.168.* or 169.254.* are not accepted.

Controlling Hostname Validation Options

The hostname validator provides a number of options that allow you to define what type of hosts or domains you will accept. Generally, providing the allow option to the email address validator is sufficient for most needs. If you find that you need to use other options specific to the Hostname validator, and provide a custom configured Hostname validator to the EmailAddress validator, it is important to note that the allow option will be ignored, therefore it must be passed directly to the Hostname validator.

$validator = new Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress([
    'allow' => Laminas\Validator\Hostname::ALLOW_DNS, // Ignored because a custom hostname validator is supplied
    'hostnameValidator' => new Laminas\Validator\Hostname([
        'allow' => Laminas\Validator\Hostname::ALLOW_ALL, // Used for hostname validation    
    ]),
]);

Validating International Domains Names

Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress will also match international characters that exist in some domains. This is known as International Domain Name (IDN) support. This is enabled by default, though you can disable this by setting a custom Laminas\Validator\Hostname validator:

$validator = new Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress([
    'hostnameValidator' => new Laminas\Validator\Hostname([
        'allow' => Laminas\Validator\Hostname::ALLOW_DNS,
        'useIdnCheck' => false,
    ]),
]);

More information on the usage of the useIdnCheck option appears in the Hostname documentation.

Please note IDNs are only validated if you allow DNS hostnames to be validated.

Validating Top Level Domains

By default the email hostname will be checked against a list of known TLDs. This is enabled by default, though you can disable this by providing a custom Laminas\Validator\Hostname validator:

$validator = new Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress([
    'hostnameValidator' => new Laminas\Validator\Hostname([
        'allow' => Laminas\Validator\Hostname::ALLOW_DNS,
        'useTldCheck' => false,
    ]),
]);

More information on the usage of the useTldCheck option appears in the Hostname documentation.

Please note TLDs are only validated if you allow DNS hostnames to be validated.

Setting Messages

Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress makes also use of Laminas\Validator\Hostname to check the hostname part of a given email address. You can specify messages for Laminas\Validator\Hostname from within Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress.

$validator = new Laminas\Validator\EmailAddress([
    'messages' => [
        Laminas\Validator\Hostname::UNKNOWN_TLD => 'I don\'t know the TLD you gave'
    ],
]);