development smtp server for windows

Question

Hi;

I am looking for a free test smptp server which can save emails in to files for my development tests. Since my development environment is windows I prefer test email server to run on windows but I can consider to install any other linux based alternatives.

Answer 1

-- Edit:

This advice only valid if you're using .NET

Check this out. If you set it appropriately, it will just store your emails on disk :)

SmtpClient client = ...;
client.PickupDirectoryLocation = @"c:\foo\emails\"; //"
client.DeliveryMethod = SmtpDeliveryMethod.SpecifiedPickupDirectory;

-- Edit

Just in case some people don't get it, this means you don't need another SMTP server for test/dev, you just set the variable appropriately.

-- Edit

For completeness, as marc_s shows below, you can set this in configs nicely via:

<system.net>  
   <mailSettings>  
      <smtp deliveryMethod="SpecifiedPickupDirectory">  
         <specifiedPickupDirectory 
             pickupDirectoryLocation="c:\foo\emails\" />  
      </smtp>  
   </mailSettings>  
</system.net>

Answer 2

The Python smtpd module has a DebuggingServer which prints all messages to stdout. If you redirect them to a file, you should be done.

Answer 3

There are a few:

• Antix SMTP Server and a "fan blog post" about it - looks very good
• Dumbster - fake SMTP server under Apache license

Or you can also set it up in your web.config to just store the e-mails in the file system (the config way of what "silky" has proposed in code):

<system.net>  
   <mailSettings>  
      <smtp deliveryMethod="SpecifiedPickupDirectory">  
         <specifiedPickupDirectory 
             pickupDirectoryLocation="c:\temp\mails\"/>  
      </smtp>  
   </mailSettings>  
</system.net>

Marc

Answer 4

Below are the links i found

• A Simple SMTP Server Mock for .NET\ -- .NET

• Dumbster -- Java

• mocksmtpd -- Ruby

Use depending on the Language and Platform of your choice.

There is also an earlier post for .NET http://stackoverflow.com/questions/550887/testing-smtp-with-net