When you send to any inbox @mailsac.com, if a + plus symbol is included, we remove that symbol and everything after it.

jeff+12345asdf@mailsac.com

will be delivered to

jeff@mailsac.com

Many email services including Gmail, iCloud and Fastmail support stripping the + plus symbol and everything after it in the local-part of the address (everything before the @ symbol).

Plus-addressing has long been a useful feature to segment user accounts across services. At Mailsac we offer a variety of disposable email and forwarding utilities that are designed for software QA engineers and developers. Things like forwarding all messages in a domain to a single address, or automatically routing email to webhooks or slack, are really easy – may not even require DNS setup.

All the code shown in this article is published at https://github.com/mailsac/mailsac-integration-test-examples

Integration tests identify errors between systems. These tests can be slow to run because of the interactions between multiple systems.

Mailsac can facilitate integration testing between web apps and transactional email services.

This article explains how to use WebSockets to make your email integration tests faster and simpler than with REST API polling.

Explaining the differences: REST APIs vs WebSockets

A REST API call uses a HTTP request for creating, reading, updating, and deleting objects. The HTTP connection between the client and server is short lived. An example of this is the List Messages In Inbox endpoint. The endpoint will return JSON formatted information about email messages in a Mailsac Inbox. Each time a client checks for new messages a new HTTP connection will be used.

A WebSocket is a persistent connection between a client and server providing full-duplex communication. By reusing an established connection there is no need to poll the REST API for changes, instead data can be pushed to the client in real time. WebSockets often listen on port 80/443 but does not use HTTP, except for the initial connection handshake.

REST API Polling Examples

The examples below use the “old way” – hit the Mailsac REST API and “poll” the inbox for new messages.

• Using Selenium To Test Account Email Signups
• Write Integration Tests Using Mailsac
• Delivery Confirmation Test
• Email Validation with Selenium

Polling is reliable and familiar for API programmers.

However, this approach can result in significant delays between when the email was received by Mailsac and when the test checks for a new message. Every few seconds, you ask the server if there are new messages.

Using a Web Socket Instead of Polling

What if the server could notify you that there are new messages? That’s where WebSockets come in.

This code example uses Node.js and Mocha test framework. Portions of the code example are presented below.

Steps to Validate Email Contents Using a WebSocket

Here’s how you can get notified of a new email message:

1. Establish a WebSocket connection with Mailsac
2. Send an email using SMTP to a private Mailsac address
3. Receive content of the email over the established WebSocket
4. Validate the content of the email
5. Send a second email using SMTP to a private Mailsac addrress
6. Receive content of second email over the established WebSocket
7. Validate the content of the second email
8. Delete both email messages
9. Close WebSocket connection

Test Configuration

This test requires several variables be defined. They can be set by editing the script or by setting environment variables.

const mailsacAPIKey = process.env.MAILSAC_API_KEY || ''; // Generated by mailsac. See https://mailsac.com/api-keys
const mailsacToAddress = process.env.MAILSAC_TO_ADDRESS || ''; // Mailsac email address where the email will be sent
const smtpUserName = process.env.SMTP_USER || ''; // Username for smtp server authentication
const smtpPassword = process.env.SMTP_PASSWORD || ''; // Password for smtp server authentication
const smtpHost = process.env.SMTP_HOST || ''; // hostname of the smtp server
const smtpPort = process.env.SMTP_PORT || 587; // port the smtp is listening on

Setup: Configure Mailsac Address for WebSocket Forwarding

The Mailsac address used in this example needs to have WebSocket forwarding enabled on it. Any messages sent to the email address will be forwarded by the Mailsac WebSocket server.

To enable WebSocket forwarding the Mailsac address must be private. Private addresses have additional features such as forwarding to Slack, forwarding to a Webhook, and forwarding to a WebSocket. Select the “Settings” button next to the email address you want to configure from Manage Owned Email Addresses. Select the check box to “Enabled forwarding all incoming email via web socket” and select “Save Settings”.

1. Establish WebSocket Connection

The NPM package ws is a WebSocket client used to connect to the Mailsac WebSocket service.

The Websocket connection to Mailsac is established on lines 12-14. The ws package will only reject a Promise if it fails to connect to the WebSocket server due to a network error. Wrapping the connection in a Promise allows for additional validations.

The Mailsac WebSocket server will send the message ({"status":200,"msg":"Listening","addresses":["example@mailsac.com"]}) after the initial connection. In lines 16-26 the initial message is parsed and checked for value of the property status. The Promise is rejected if the initial status message is not received or does not have a status code of 200.

const mailsacAPIKey = process.env.MAILSAC_API_KEY || ''; // Generated by mailsac. See https://mailsac.com/api-keys
const mailsacToAddress = process.env.MAILSAC_TO_ADDRESS || ''; // Mailsac email address where the email will be sent

describe("send email to mailsac", function () {

  // Open websocket waiting for email. This websocket will be reused for tests in this file.
  before(() => {
    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
      ws = new WebSocket(
        `wss://sock.mailsac.com/incoming-messages?key=${mailsacAPIKey}&addresses=${mailsacToAddress}`
      );
      let wsMessage; // message response object
      ws.on("message", (msg) => {
        try {
          wsMessage = JSON.parse(msg);
        } catch {
          assert(wsMessage, "Failed to parse JSON from websocket message");
        }
        if (wsMessage.status != 200) {
          reject(new Error("connection error: " + wsMessage.error));
          return;
        }
        resolve(wsMessage);
      });
      ws.on("error", (err) => {
        reject(err);
      });
    });
  });
});

2. Send email using SMTP

The NPM package nodemailer is used to send a test email via SMTP.

The connection to the STMP server is configured in lines 4-10. Most SMTP servers will require authentication.

The email’s to, from, subject, and content are set in lines 14-18. The email will be sent to the address defined in the configuration at the beginning of the script or the environment variable MAILSAC_TO_ADDRESS. The email will include a link to the website https://example.com.

  it("sends email with link to example.com website", async () => {
    // create a transporter object using the default SMTP transport
    const transport = nodemailer.createTransport({
      host: smtpHost,
      port: smtpPort,
      auth: {
        user: smtpUserName,
        pass: smtpPassword,
      },
    });
    // send mail using the defined transport object
    const result = await transport.sendMail({
      from: smtpUserName, // sender address
      to: mailsacToAddress, // recipient address
      subject: "Hello!",
      text: "Check out https://example.com",
      html: "Check out <a href https://example.com>My website</a>",
    });
  });

3. Receive Message via WebSocket

Once the email arrives, Mailsac will send a JSON formatted version of the email on the WebSocket established earlier in this example. ws.on("message", (msg) => { ... } is a function that will run when new message is sent by the WebSocket server. The msg is parsed as JSON. Then the Promise will resolve if the message has a to property. The existence of the to property is checked to make sure the message sent by the WebSocket server was an email and not a status message. The await keyword will cause the test to wait until a message is sent over the WebSocket or the test times out.

const wsMessage = await new Promise((resolve) => {
  ws.on("message", (msg) => {
    const wsResponse = JSON.parse(msg);
    if (wsResponse.to) {
      resolve(wsResponse);
    }
  });
});

Example JSON formatted message

{

    "status": 200,
    "email": 

{

    "text": "string",
    "body": "string",
    "raw": "string",
    "headers": { },
    "_id": "m3phnJ2ag3example-0",
    "from": 

[

    {
        "name": "string",
        "address": "string"
    }

],
"to": 
[

    {
        "name": "string",
        "address": "string"
    }

],
"cc": 
[

    {
        "name": "string",
        "address": "string"
    }

],
"bcc": 
[

    {
        "name": "string",
        "address": "string"
    }

],
"subject": "string",
"savedBy": "string",
"originalInbox": "string",
"inbox": "user@example.com",
"domain": "example.com",
"received": "1985-04-12T23:20:50.52Z",
"size": 0,
"attachments": 
[

    "5ea9c924627e68f988c9c7ca44340892"

],
"ip": "string",
"via": "string",
"folder": "inbox",
"labels": 
[

    "string"

],
"read": true,
"rtls": true,
"links": 

        [
            "string"
        ],
        "spam": 0.345
    }

}

4. Validate Content of the Email

The assert package is used to validate the contents of the email. The subject and text properties are assigned to new variables. assert.equal(subject, "Hello!"); will cause an exception if subject is not equal to Hello!. The test framework Mocha will interpret this as a failure and the test will fail. Likewise, if the variable email_text is not Check out https://example.com the test will fail.

const subject = wsMessage.subject;
const email_text = wsMessage.text;
assert.equal(subject, "Hello!");
assert.equal(email_text, "Check out https://example.com");

5-7. Send Another Email and Validate Its Content

The reason to send a second email is to demonstrate that the Mailsac WebSocket connection can be reused. This second test will reuse the WebSocket connection established (variable name ws) in the before() block in step 1. The only difference between the first and second test is the content of the email.

// Sends a second email reusing the websocket.
it("sends email with link to unsubscribe.example.com website", async () => {
  const transport = nodemailer.createTransport({
    host: smtpHost,
    port: smtpPort,
    auth: {
      user: smtpUserName,
      pass: smtpPassword,
    },
  });
  const result = await transport.sendMail({
    from: smtpUserName, // sender address
    to: mailsacToAddress, // recipient address
    subject: "Unsubscribe",
    text: "Click the link to unsubscribe https://unsubscribe.example.com",
    html: "Check out <a href https://example.com>My website</a>",
  });

  console.log("Sent email with messageId: ", result.messageId);

  const wsMessage = await new Promise((resolve) => {
    ws.on("message", (msg) => {
      const wsResponse = JSON.parse(msg);
      if (wsResponse.to) {
        resolve(wsResponse);
      }
    });
  });

  assert(wsMessage, "Never received messages!");

  const subject = wsMessage.subject;
  const email_text = wsMessage.text;
  assert.equal(subject, "Unsubscribe");
  assert.equal(
    email_text,
    "Click the link to unsubscribe https://unsubscribe.example.com"
  );
});

8. Delete Emails to Prevent Leaky Tests

An after() block will run after the tests have completed. The REST API Endpoint – Delete All Messages In An In Inbox is called to delete the test emails. By deleting all the test emails, it prevents these emails from being fetched in another test, which could impact the results of another test. It is best practice to clean up tests after they ran.

The NPM package supertest is used to make the REST call to delete the messages. Virtually any HTTP client library could be used to do this. Feel free to use the HTTP client library you feel most comfortable with.

afte(() =>
  request("https://mailsac.com")
    .delete(`/api/addresses/${mailsacToAddress}/messages`)
    .set("Mailsac-Key", mailsacAPIKey)
    .expect(204)
);

9. Close WebSocket Connection

An after() block is used to close the WebSocket connection after all the tests have completed. It is best practice to close all connections on the termination of the test.

// close websocket after all tests finish
after(() => ws.close());

Next Steps

The use of WebSockets helps speed up tests and uses API calls more efficiently.

See the WebSocket Test Page to see a WebSocket in action in your browser. This page includes a basic code example usage ofoffor a WebSocket client and is a great starting point before divining into integration testing using WebSockets.

If you have questions about this example or the Mailsac WebSocket service please post on https://forum.mailsac.com

All the code shown in this article is published at
https://github.com/mailsac/selenium-js-example

Selenium and Mailsac can be used to test the delivery and contents of a signup email sent by a web application.

This example will demonstrate how to configure Selenium and provide code examples to automate and integrate testing with Mailsac.

What is Selenium?

Selenium is an automation tool for testing website user interfaces. It is open-source and supports multiple programming languages such as Java, Python, Javascript etc.

Selenium is not a single tool but is composed a several tools. Our example will focus on the WebDriver component. This will allow us to test our application as if a real person were operating the web browser.

Prerequisites

• Node.js. (How to install Node.js)
• Web Browser
• Git

Installing Selenium

The Selenium WebDriver is installed during step 2 by running npm install.

1. Clone the selenium-js-example repository and change directories to the cloned repository
   git clone https://github.com/mailsac/selenium-js-example.git && cd ./selenium-js-example
2. Install the Selenium WebDriver by running npm install
3. Download browser driver for the browser that will be tested (see table for download links).
4. Place the browser driver in the system PATH

The safaridriver is included with Safari 10 for OSX El Capitan and macOS Sierra. It does require Remote Automation in the Develop Menu to be enabled.

Configure the Browser for Selenium to Use

This example will default to using Firefox. In order to use a different browser set the SELENIUM_BROWSER environment variable.

List of supported SELENIUM_BROWSER values

SELENIUM_BROWSER=chrome
SELENIUM_BROWSER=firefox
SELENIUM_BROWSER=internet_explorer
SELENIUM_BROWSER=safari
SELENIUM_BROWSER=edge
SELENIUM_BROWSER=opera

Web Application Overview

The example web application consists of a single page with a form. The form accepts a username and email address.

Configuring the Web Application

Email will be sent using the Mailsac Outbound Message REST API. You will need to update mailsacAPIKey with your API key. mailsacFromAddress is the address that this example will use are the from address.

const mailsacAPIKey = ""; // Generated by mailsac. See https://mailsac.com/api-keys
const mailsacFromAddress = "web-application@mailsac.com";

Manual Test of Email Delivery

To manually test email delivery, launch the example web application by running npm start from the command line. Use a web browser to view http://localhost:3000/index.html

1. Enter a username and email address.

2. If everything went well you should see a confirmation.

3. Check the inbox of Mailsac address you send to using the form on https://mailsac.com

4. Verify the message you sent has been received.

Automated Testing Using Selenium

To automate UI testing a few different components are required:

• Selenium WebDriver: Automates input into our web application’s form
• Mocha: Test framework to run the tests
• HTTP Requests Module: To interact with the Mailsac API
• Assert Module: Validates if a given expression is true
• Webserver: Runs our web application

All of these components are installed when running npm install

Configure Mailsac API Key

To interact with the Mailsac API an API Key is needed. To generate a new API Key sign in to Mailsac and go to the API Keys Page.

An API Key is available for free to all registered users of Mailsac.

Configure the test to work with your API Key by adding it to the following line in ./test/test.js

const mailsacAPIKey = ""; // Generated by mailsac. See https://mailsac.com/api-keys

Run the Test

Before running the tests your Mailsac API key needs to be configured in ./test/test.js and SMTP settings configured in app.js.

The tests can be executed by running npm test from the command line.

npm test

> selenium-tests@1.0.0 test /home/user/repos/selenium-js-example
> mocha



  http-server
    register new user
(node:838754) [DEP0066] DeprecationWarning: OutgoingMessage.prototype._headers is deprecated
      ✓ sends email with link to example.com website (1383ms)


  1 passing (1s)

The last line in the above code snippet 1 passing (1s) shows our test passed. If the test failed, an error message will be displayed.

If you are using a browser other than Firefox you will need to add an environment variable when running the tests (eg SELENIUM_BROWSER=chrome npm test).

Using Mocha and Selenium to Automate Tests

This section will cover how Mocha and Selenium work together in this code example to test email delivery.

The integration tests are located in ./test/test.js. The tests are written in Mocha, which uses a behavior driver development model. This allows for the description of tests in easy to understand language.

Mocha Test Introduction

In the following example, the describe block includes a description of what is being tested. The it block describes the expected result. assert is used to test the for truth. If the expected statement is not true, there will be an exception, and the test will fail.

describe("tests truth", () => {
    it('true equals true', function() {
        assert(true); // assert checks for truth
    });
    it('false equals false', () => {
        // assert equal checks the first and second parameter are equal
        assert.equal(false,false);
    });
})

Mocha and Selenium

This section is a line by line explanation of the Mocha tests in the example. The code example is available on GitHub.

Mocha is used to call the Selenium WebDriver to perform actions on the example Web Application. The describe block shows we are going to be testing the process of registering a new user. The it block tells us what we expect to happen.

Inside the it block Selenium WebDriver is instructed to:

• open a web browser using the webapp’s localhost URL
• find the html element with the id username and enter text in the field
• find the html element with the id email and enter specified text in the field
• find the html element with the id submitUserCreation and click on it

it("sends email with link to example.com website", async () => {
  await driver.get(webappUrl);
  await driver.findElement(webdriver.By.id("username")).sendKeys("webdriver", "ExampleUser");
  await driver.findElement(webdriver.By.id("email")).sendKeys("webdriver", signupEmailAddress);
  await driver.findElement(webdriver.By.id("submitUserCreation")).click();
...

Our webapp will then email the address submitted by Selenium.

There is a for loop, following the Selenium commands, that uses the Mailsac API to fetch the mail from the specified email address. If an email isn’t found, it will retry 10 times waiting about 5 seconds between tries.

let messages = [];
for (let i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
   // returns the JSON array of email message objects from mailsac.
   const res = await request("https://mailsac.com")
           .get(`/api/addresses/${signupEmailAddress}/messages`)
           .set("Mailsac-Key", mailsacAPIKey);
   messages = res.body;
   if (messages.length > 0) {
      break;
   }
   await wait(4500);
}

If no messages are received from the Mailsac API after 10 tries, assert will create an exception and throw the error Never received messages!. The contents of the email are checked to see if the link https://example.com is in the email. If, the link is not found, an exception is created stating Missing / Incorrect link in email

assert(messages.length, "Never received messages!");
const link = messages[0].links.find((l) => "https://example.com");
assert(link, "Missing / Incorrect link in email");

Next Steps

This example can be modified to automate your team’s UI testing procedures. For another example of Mocha tests using Mailsac see the Integration Tests Blog Post.

Our forums are a great place to discuss usage of Mailsac’s API.

Github repository for all source code in this example:
https://github.com/mailsac/selenium-js-example