This isn’t really a feature I’ve needed much but I thought it might be useful to share if anyone else ever needs it.

Basically, a long time ago, Coldfusion had a little secret function called CFUSION_VERIFYMAIL which was used to verify the smtp server was available to CF. Once ColdFusion became ColdFusion MX that function went away and I never thought about it again.

Well, today I wanted to do something very similar but I wasn’t sure what to do so I searched for my old hidden function and found a forum thread that offered the basics of a solution. Well technically it is the solution but it just wasn’t as complete as I wanted it so I fluffed it just a touch and now I offer to you as a resource should you need it.

<cffunction name="mailServerIsUp" returntype="boolean" access="public">
<cfargument name="smtp_server" type="string" default="" />
<cfargument name="smtp_port" type="numeric" default="0" />
<cfargument name="timeout" type="numeric" default="10" />
<cfargument name="service" type="any" default='#createObject("java",
"coldfusion.server.ServiceFactory")#' />

<cfset arguments.service = arguments.service.getMailSpoolService() />


<cfif LEN(arguments.smtp_server)>
<cfset arguments.service.setServer(arguments.smtp_server) />
</cfif>
<cfif VAL(arguments.smtp_port)>
<cfset arguments.service.setPort(VAL(arguments.smtp_port)) />
</cfif>

<cfset arguments.service.setTimeout(VAL(arguments.timeout)) />

<cfreturn arguments.service.verifyServer() />
</cffunction>

I’ve tried to make the function fairly flexible (in case you already keep a copy of the service factory in your application scope or something plus I wanted to make sure you could point at your own applications mailserver/port if you need to OR it will just use the default server settings.

Finally, I had to change the name of the function becuase CF was throwing an error if I tried to call that old hidden functions name. Plus, I think verifymailserver is more clear than just verifymail. I just left the cfusion_ on the front as a hat tip to the original.

Obviously this can be improved by adding some exception handling - especially in regards to determining if the arguments.service passed in is the correct object type; but I’ll leave that to others.