Don't Have A Local SMTP Server? No Problem...Output Emails To A Directory in your .NET Apps

I ran across this cool little feature of the System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient class where you can tell it that an email sent should get dumped to a directory as a .EML file instead of being sent to a SMTP server.

This is a really cool feature for DEV/QA environments where you don't always have a SMTP server that you can test against, but have code that sends email that you need to make sure its working.  I could have used this a few times where I accidentally sent out a few emails while testing that I didn't mean to.

In your Web.config file, or App.config, add the following under <configuration>

<system.net>

    <mailSettings>

        <smtp deliveryMethod="SpecifiedPickupDirectory">

            <specifiedPickupDirectory pickupDirectoryLocation="C:\maildump\" />

        </smtp>

    </mailSettings>

</system.net>

Now, when you create a MailMessage and send it through the SmtpClient, the email will be created as an .EML file in the directory you specified.

I am actually using this on my blog right now so that when people email me I don't have to have a SMTP server to have their messages sent through, I can just look at dump directory at the emails.