10.31.07

TMail 1.1.0 Gem Released

Posted in E-mail, Ruby at 9:00 am by Željko Filipin

I have been using TMail for testing e-mail functionality of web application that I test for a long time. But, development of that library stopped at 2004. Today I found out that it is again in development. Take a look at it’s web site and RubyForge project site.

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10.15.07

Troubleshooting SMTP Issues with Telnet

Posted in E-mail at 9:00 am by Željko Filipin

I have really bad memory. I have to write this down. I just know I will forget it, but need it later.

I had to find out why one user did not receive any mail from us. I tried the usual things, but all looked fine. My developer suggested to troubleshoot it with telnet. I found good article about troubleshooting SMTP issues. What I did:

• open command prompt
• find server
>nslookup -querytype=MX [domain]
...
Non-authoritative answer:
[domain] MX preference = [integer], mail exchanger = [subdomain].[domain]
...

• connect to that machine with telnet
>telnet [subdomain].[domain] 25

• good
  220 SMTP Proxy Server Ready
• not so good
  554 Transaction Failed Listed in connection control deny list

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02.07.07

Testing E-mail: The Code

Posted in E-mail at 6:12 pm by Željko Filipin

Lately I have been testing e-mail functionality of web application. This is the fifth post about that experience. Last week I wrote about lessons learned.

I have written a little framework that helps me with testing e-mail.

To use it, you will have to install Ruby, Tmail and SMTP server.

Then download mail.zip (2,20 KB) and extract it. No installation required. There are even some unit tests (unit_tests.rb) and example code (usage.rb).

Send mail.

SendMail.new(
“user@domain”,
“application@domain”,
“title”,
“body”).send

Check if application sent mail that you have expected.

Mail.received?(
[Mail.new(
"application@domain",
"user@domain",
"title")])

For now, mail that is sent can only contain from, to, subject and body. While receiving, I only check from, to and subject.

This is code that I am really using every day.

Please understand that I am a tester, not a developer, and I know that this code could be better. Feel free to improve it. Post bug reports and your comments here.

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