Re: [PEPr] Proposal for Mail::Mail_smtp_direct

On Feb 12, 2004, at 4:48 PM, Luca Mariano wrote:

I don't think so. I extended the phpmailer class in order to do this work, this was for a customer who needs exactly to know all details about mail sent. If you contact directly recipient SMTP you get an exact feedback about the failure reason (if any) or a definitive ok...

You do, but: a) your code doesn't handle retries for transient errors, like all major MTAs do. b) your code doesn't fall back onto A records in the event of non-existent MX records, which while not RFC-compliant is implemented in all major MTAs. c) You can get that sort of information back from your MTA. Email is designed to be asynchronous, so it's not uncommon to take 15, 30 or 120 minutes to deliver a message. An MTA accounts for that, your class does not (nor can it reasonably be expected to, in all fairness). George