Checking if email is valid

[Cameron Simpson]

On 01Nov2023 14:08, Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards at gmail.com> wrote:
>On 2023-11-01, Simon Connah via Python-list <python-list at python.org> wrote:
>> I'm building a simple project using smtplib and have a
>> question. I've been doing unit testing but I'm not sure how to check
>> if an email message is valid.
[...]
>> Could someone push me in the right direction please? I just want to
>> find out if a string is a valid email address.

I confess that I punt "syntactically valid" to email.utils.getaddresses:
https://docs.python.org/3/library/email.utils.html#email.utils.getaddresses

"Deliverable"? I'm prepared to just send to it and hope not to get a 
bounce; delivery of email is, after all, asynchronous. (Even if it were 
going direct to the primary MX, I still hand it to the local mail system 
to deal with.)

"A real person or entity"? A lot of systems do the round trip thing: 
here's a special unique and opaue URL,please visit it to confirm receipt 
of this email (implying email is 'real"). You see this a lot when 
signing up for things. And for plenty of things I generate a random 
throw away address at mailinator.com (looking at you, every "catch up" 
free online TV streaming service who still wants me to log in).

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <cs at cskk.id.au>