views:

440

answers:

4

EDIT: This question is pointless, except as an exercise in red herrings. The issue turned out to be a combination of my idiocy (NO ONE was being emailed as the host was not being specified and was incorrect in web.config) and the users telling me that they sometimes got the emails and sometimes didn't, when in reality they were NEVER getting the emails.

So, instead of taking proper steps to reproduce the problem in a controlled setting, I relied on user information and the "it works on my machine" mentality. Good reminder to myself and anyone else out there who is sometimes an idiot.


I just hit something I think is inconsistent, and wanted to see if I'm doing something wrong, if I'm an idiot, or...

MailMessage msg = new MailMessage();
msg.To.Add("[email protected]");
msg.To.Add("[email protected]");
msg.To.Add("[email protected]");
msg.To.Add("[email protected]");

Really only sends this email to 1 person, the last one.

To add multiples I have to do this: msg.To.Add("[email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected]");

I don't get it. I thought I was adding multiple people to the "To" address collection, but what I was doing was replacing it.

I think I just realized my error -- to add one item to the collection, use .To.Add(new MailAddress("[email protected]"))

If you use just a string, it replaces everything it had in its list. EDIT: Other people have tested and are not seeing this behavior. This is either a bug in my particular version of the framework, or more likely, an idiot maneuver by me.

Ugh. I'd consider this a rather large gotcha! Since I answered my own question, but I think this is of value to have in the stackoverflow archive, I'll still ask it. Maybe someone even has an idea of other traps that you can fall into.

+2  A: 

Add multiple System.MailAdress object to get what you want.

David Brunelle
+1  A: 

You can do this either with multiple System.Net.Mail.MAilAddress objects or you can provide a single string containing all of the addresses separated by commas

Brian Surowiec
+4  A: 

I wasn't able to replicate your bug:

var message = new MailMessage();

message.To.Add("[email protected]");
message.To.Add("[email protected]");

message.From = new MailAddress("[email protected]");
message.Subject = "Test";
message.Body = "Test";

var client = new SmtpClient("localhost", 25);
client.Send(message);

Dumping the contents of the To: MailAddressCollection:

MailAddressCollection (2 items)
DisplayName User Host Address

user example.com [email protected]
user2 example.com [email protected]

And the resulting e-mail as caught by smtp4dev:

Received: from mycomputername (mycomputername [127.0.0.1])
     by localhost (Eric Daugherty's C# Email Server)
     3/8/2010 12:50:28 PM
MIME-Version: 1.0
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected], [email protected]
Date: 8 Mar 2010 12:50:28 -0800
Subject: Test
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Test

Are you sure there's not some other issue going on with your code or SMTP server?

Lance McNearney
+1 Neither can I.
SLaks
I'm with you. I can't reproduce this.
Austin Salonen
Hmmm. Right now the mail server is down for maintenance, so I don't know of one I could test with. However, I was pretty careful, and the code I was using was very simple.But, you guys took the time to run your own tests, and multiple people. I'm still looking at my code to see if there is anything else going on. Otherwise, I'll have to tell some engineer to check out the server.
Matt Dawdy
@Matt Dawdy: You could download the linked smtp4dev to verify *you* are doing things correctly.
Austin Salonen
Also, feel free to post more code in your question.
Austin Salonen
A: 

You could try putting the e-mails into a semi-colon-delmited string ("[email protected]; [email protected]"):

C#:

ArrayList arEmails = new ArrayList();
arEmails.Add("[email protected]");
arEmails.Add("[email protected]");
           
string strEmails = string.Join("; ", arEmails);

VB.NET if you're interested:

Dim arEmails As New ArrayList
arEmails.Add("[email protected]")
arEmails.Add("[email protected]")

Dim strEmails As String = String.Join("; ", arEmails)
Paperjam
I think that if I go this route that it wants the emails separated by commas. But this then limits me in that I can't put a "user friendly" email name. Like how we used to do it years ago with "<Bob Smith> [email protected]" type construct. Maybe I have that backwards, I have forgotten now...
Matt Dawdy