Validate Email Header in Python

Question

I have a RegEx for validating email addresses, but I'm really looking to validate a whole From header. Any of these would be valid:

[email protected]
<[email protected]>
My Name <[email protected]>

Is there anything out there that would validate these as valid from headers? I'm going to look in the smtp library :)

I have to ask, why do you need to validate the headers yourself rather than letting an SMTP server do it for you? It's a rather complicated task to do the validation properly. — David Z
– David Z, Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 19:54
If you want to make sure you're validating everything properly, check the standard format: faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822.html — Michael Mior
– Michael Mior, Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 21:54
We're supplying our own from address, so I need to make sure the email editors supply a proper from header/email address, otherwise the emails they send will fail. — scoopseven
– scoopseven, Commented Jul 20, 2010 at 4:12

scoopseven · Accepted Answer · 2010-07-20 04:10:29Z

1

I couldn't get the posted response to work, so I've been working on this and finally got this one, which seems to work so far. I'm sure it'll miss/catch something, but it's working for now.

[a-zA-Z0-9+_\-\.\ ]*[ ]*<?[a-zA-Z0-9+_\-\.]+@[0-9a-zA-Z][.-0-9a-zA-Z]*.[a-zA-Z]+>?

answered Jul 20, 2010 at 4:10

scoopseven

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yivi · Accepted Answer · 2019-08-15 09:25:43Z

1

Be aware that there are plenty of other valid cases of e-mail addresses beyond what you've posted.

See here for a recipe that may help. Also read this for a great discussion of parsing email addresses with a regex. There are any number of good regexes in there that will match the uses you're looking for, imho :-)

edited Aug 15, 2019 at 9:25

yivi

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answered Jul 16, 2010 at 19:47

godswearhats

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