An easy way to take advantage of email verification is using REST (REpresentational State Transfer). If you are not familiar with REST, it is an Internet protocol used by Web developers that takes advantage of the core architecture of the Web. It consists of "servers" and "clients" either of which can be anywhere in the connected world, with clients making XML requests to a server and the server responding with an answer, also in XML. This is the same way browsers request Web pages from Web sites, although HTML is passed back and forth rather than XML.
In the case of REST, the client is either your browser or an application (can be a SAAS application, traditional software application, business process, or a mobile application such as an iPhone app), and the server is StrikeIron's data center and platform. In this example, the client will be a Web browser, and the server will be StrikeIron's primary data center in North Carolina.In other words, an automated request containing an email address is sent to StrikeIron's servers, and then upon receipt of the request over the Web, the StrikeIron "service" does some processing and checking, and then returns a response as to whether or not it is indeed a valid email address. This is an alternative to the SOAP Web services protocol that is often used to call these services.
Here is the textual structure for making a REST call using StrikeIron's email verification service that is easy to try:
http://ws.strikeiron.com/StrikeIron/EmailVerify5/EmailVerification/VerifyEmail?LicenseInfo.RegisteredUser.UserID=[UserID]&LicenseInfo.RegisteredUser.Password=[Password]&VerifyEmail.Email=[EmailAddress]&VerifyEmail.Timeout=[TimeoutValue]
In the above example, all parameters required to call the "Verify Email" operation are passed in via the query string in the link above. You will need to replace each of these tokens (noted by square [] brackets) with the appropriate parameter value. You will also need to ensure that the values have all URL reserve characters correctly escaped if necessary.
The "Timeout" value in the above string must be an integer value between 30 and 120 and indicates the number of seconds that must elapse before a timeout occurs. This is required because some email servers can take awhile to respond to various SMTP requests, and you don't want to hold up whatever processing you are doing for an indefinite period of time.
If you don't have a StrikeIron UserID and Password, you can register at our site and receive 25 "hits" (executions) for free, and these will be provisioned the first time you execute the service (you don't have to set up the service in advance with your registered account - provisioning is automatic upon execution).
You can also (and should) replace "http" with "https" for a secure invocation of the service.
To try it and experience a REST call, simply copy the above REST text string into any browser URL window (Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc.) like you would any URL address (make sure you replace the values in the [parameter] slots and without the brackets), and you will get the XML response from StrikeIron's servers. That's all there is to it. Of course, if you do this within an application, you will have to parse the results from the XML.
Also, any of the StrikeIron Web services can be called using REST, not just email validation. For example, here is the REST string required to call our SMS alerts and notification text messaging service, enabling text messages to be sent to a cell phone/mobile device (supports over 400 carriers in 160 countries):
http://ws.strikeiron.com/StrikeIron/SMSAlerts4/GlobalSMSPro/SendMessage?LicenseInfo.RegisteredUser.UserID=[UserID]&LicenseInfo.RegisteredUser.Password=[Password]&SendMessage.ToNumber=[ToNumber]&SendMessage.FromName=[FromName]&SendMessage.MessageText=[Message]
Once you've mastered the ability to make REST calls within Web applications, or any other application where it is appropriate, you can really build some incredible functionality that leverages the architecture of the Web, cobbling together some of the best the Web has to offer.