Urgently need help with SMTP mail service

Question

hi I'm new to C# & SMTP mail services. Hope to learn from expertise of other developers. I have read about the System.Web.Mail Namespace in the .NET Framework and the main classes used are System.Web.Mail.MailMessage and the SmtpMail. This may sound stupid but hope someone can help please. The classes in System.Web.Mail make use of the SMTP email service built into Microsoft Windows 2000. 1. Is this built-in service referring to the IIS's SMTP mail service or something else? 2. Is the service normally automatically Running already in Windows 2000 OR Do we have to set up & configure the SMTP mail service in order to run the C# application using System.Web.Mail.MailMessage and the SmtpMail? Really appreciate some help Urgently.. Thank you very much. Listing1 contains the listing for a simple web form to send email. This form assumes that the SMTP service is running on the server.

annie.kok · Answer

hi thanks James & Mahesh for your pointers. I already understood the SMTP classes in .NET Framework. They are alright for sending mails out. However .NET Framework does not support receiving of emails. Moreover my application will not use POP or IMAP. Merely plain SMTP. My application is a server program that checks the emails directly and I have not seen any examples of how to retrieve directly from the SMTP Drop folder. :-( I've already gone through the examples at the Internet & Web corner. All the examples I've seen assume there's a POP3 or IMAP server. Any ideas? Annie PS: Btw the download of simpleSMTPMailer.cs is not working at http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/internet/simpleSMTPMailer.asp

Mahesh Chand · Answer

Here are some samples from Internet and Web section. I belive all of these use SMTP classes found in the .NET Framework library. Download the code and see the code. You can get the idea of how to use the classes. http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/Code/2003/July/SMTPPOP3MailServer.asp http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/Internet/SendingEmailsThroughOutlookCB.asp http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/Internet/SMTPMailProgramRS.asp http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/internet/simpleSMTPMailer.asp http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/1/send_mai1l.asp

james · Answer

Okay using the SmtpMail class to send mail you can set an SMTP server. If one is not defined it will use the local SMTP server on the local machine. If this is something you are going to deploy I would recommend using your corporate SMTP server for each instance rather than depending on the client. -James

annie.kok · Answer

complicated to explain.. it's a management decision. we don't need a full mail server nor do we want to build one. we just need to do basic stuff: - send SMTP mails (.NET supports) - receive SMTP mails (no POP3 no IMAP) - get notified of received email - do some processing/deletion of the message upon notification of received email. that's it. Appreciate advice from experts like u. ;-) hopefully i get a much firmer grasp of SMTP after all these.

james · Answer

I'm curious why are you re-inventing the wheel? There are literally hundreds of mail servers out there many open source some even in C#. Why are you building your own? Especially if you don't have a firm grasp of SMTP? not trying to sound rude just trying to figure out what will help you most.. -James

annie.kok · Answer

hi I've checked out the Internet & Web section but could not find the stuff I was asking. TOo simple that it's probably not even mentioned. I've got some kind of opinion based on some research. Which is 1. Yes the built-in service referred by System.Web.Mail is the IIS's SMTP mail service. 2. By default SMTP mail service is not running. It has to be setup & configured. Can someone confirm whether I'm right? thanks.

Mahesh Chand · Answer

See Internet & Web section of www.c-sharpcorner.com. There are ton of samples available there.