og-shawn-crigger/mailcheck

Email domain spelling suggester

mailcheck.js

The jQuery plugin that suggests a right domain when your users misspell it in an email address.

What does it do?

When your user types in "[email protected]", Mailcheck will suggest "[email protected]".

At Kicksend, we use Mailcheck to help reduce typos in email addresses during sign ups. It has reduced our sign up confirmation email bounces by 50%.

See it live in action here.

Installation

• For instant use, download src/jquery.mailcheck.min.js into javascripts directory. Use src/jquery.mailcheck.js if you want to hack on it, or have your own minimizer.

• For hacking, fork the repo or git clone it.

Usage

First, include jQuery and Mailcheck into the page.

<script src="jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="jquery.mailcheck.min.js"></script>

Have a text field.

<input id="email" name="email" type="text" />

Now, attach Mailcheck to the text field. Remember to declare an array of domains you want to check against.

<script>
var domains = ['hotmail.com', 'gmail.com', 'aol.com'];
$('#email').on('blur', function() {
  $(this).mailcheck({
    domains: domains,   // optional
    suggested: function(element, suggestion) {
      // callback code
    },
    empty: function(element) {
      // callback code
    }
  });
});
</script>

Mailcheck takes in two callbacks, suggested and empty. We recommend you supply both.

suggested is called when there's a suggestion. Mailcheck passes in the target element and the suggestion. The suggestion is an object with the following members:

{
  address: 'test',          // the address; part before the @ sign
  domain: 'hotmail.com',    // the suggested domain
  full: '[email protected]'  // the full suggested email
}

empty is called when there's no suggestion. Mailcheck just passes in the target element.

You can use the callbacks to display the appropriate visual feedback to the user.

Domains

The Mailcheck jQuery plugin defaults to a list of top email domains if the domain option isn't provided. We still recommend supplying your own domains based on the distribution of your users.

The included default domains are: yahoo.com, google.com, hotmail.com, gmail.com, me.com, aol.com, mac.com, live.com, comcast.net, googlemail.com, msn.com, hotmail.co.uk, yahoo.co.uk, facebook.com, verizon.net, sbcglobal.net, att.net, gmx.com, and mail.com.

Customization

The Mailcheck jQuery plugin wraps Kicksend.mailcheck. The prime candidates for customization are the methods Kicksend.mailcheck.findClosestDomain and Kicksend.mailcheck.stringDistance.

Mailcheck currently uses the sift3 string similarity algorithm by Siderite.

Since Mailcheck runs client side, keep in mind file size, memory usage, and performance.

Tests

Mailcheck is tested with Jasmine. Load spec/spec_runner.html in your browser to run the tests.

Contributing

Let's make Mailcheck awesome. We're on the lookout for maintainers and contributors.

And do send in those pull requests! To get them accepted, please:

• Test your code. Add test cases to spec/mailcheckSpec.js, and run it across browsers (yes, including IE).

• Minify the plugin. Google's Closure Compiler is a good one.

Upcoming features, bugs and feature requests are managed in Issues.

Who's using Mailcheck?

• Kicksend
• Dropbox
• Flotype
• Kippt
• Minecraft
• Prispy
• SB Nation
• Show Space
• The Verge
• Uber

Do you use Mailcheck? Tweet me your link.

Related links

• Two ways to reduce bounced welcome emails by Postmark

• MooTools port by Dimitar Christoff

• WordPress e-Commerce Plugin

• Mailcheck for Drupal

Author

Derrick Ko (@derrickko)

License

Copyright (c) 2012 Receivd, Inc.

Licensed under the MIT License.