Parse Bounced Email (delivery-report) and Read Receipt

Read Receipt

Some e-mail applications, such as Microsoft Office Outlook, employ a read-receipt tracking mechanism. A sender selects the receipt request option prior to sending the message. Upon opening the email, each recipient has the option of notifying the sender that the message was opened and read or deleted.

However, there is no guarantee that you will get a read-receipt. Some possible reason are that very few e-mail applications or services support read receipts, or simply because users disable the functionality. Those do support read-receipt aren't necessarily compatible with or capable of recognizing requests from a different e-mail service or application

Delivery Receipt and FailureReport

It is also called a DSN (delivery service notification), which is a request to the recipient’s email server to send you a notification about the delivery of an email you've just sent. The notification takes the form of an email, and will tell you if your delivery succeeded (Delivery Receipt), failed, got delayed (Failure Report).

Parse Report

For many email campaign applications, the very important task is detecting if the email is received by recipient or not. Parsing the delivery report is the common way to get the email status. EAGetMail .NET class provides a built-in function (GetReport) to parse the report. The following sample demonstrates how to parse the delivery-report.

If ReporType is DeliveryReceipt, ReadReceipt or Deleted, the report probably has only OriginalSender, OriginalRecipient and OriginalMessageID information in the report, it depends on the mail server that generated the report.

Example

[Visual Basic, C#] The following example demonstrates how to parse the delivery report with EAGetMail POP3 and IMAP4 .NET Component. To get the full samples of EAGetMail, please refer to Samples section.

[VB - Parse Bounced Email and Read Receipt]
Imports EAGetMail

Public Sub ParseReport(ByVal emlFile As String)
    Dim oMail As New Mail("TryIt")
    oMail.Load(emlFile, False)

    If Not oMail.IsReport Then
        Console.WriteLine("This is not a delivery report.")
        Exit Sub
    End If

    Dim oReport As MailReport = oMail.GetReport()
    Select Case (oReport.ReportType)
        Case DeliveryReportType.DeliveryReceipt
            Console.WriteLine("This is a delivery receipt!")
        Case DeliveryReportType.ReadReceipt
            Console.WriteLine("This is a read receipt!")
        Case DeliveryReportType.Deleted
            Console.WriteLine("This is a unread receipt, this email was deleted without read!")
        Case DeliveryReportType.DelayedReport
            Console.WriteLine("This is a delayed report, server will retry to send it automatically!")
        Case Else
            Console.WriteLine("This is a failure report!")
    End Select

    Console.WriteLine("OriginalSender: {0}", oReport.OriginalSender)
    Console.WriteLine("OriginalRecipient: {0}", oReport.OriginalRecipient)
    Console.WriteLine("OriginalMessageID: {0}", oReport.OriginalMessageID)

    If oReport.ReportType = DeliveryReportType.FailureReport Or
        oReport.ReportType = DeliveryReportType.DelayedReport Then
        Console.WriteLine("ErrCode: {0}", oReport.ErrCode)
        Console.WriteLine("ErrDescription: {0}", oReport.ErrDescription)
        Console.WriteLine("OriginalSubject: {0}", oReport.OriginalSubject)
        Console.WriteLine("ReportMTA: {0}", oReport.ReportMTA)
        Console.WriteLine(oReport.OriginalHeaders.ToString())
    End If
End Sub


[C# - Parse Bounced Email and Read Receipt]
using System;
using System.Collections;
using EAGetMail;

public void Parse_Report(string emlFile)
{
    Mail oMail = new Mail("TryIt");
    oMail.Load(emlFile, false);

    if (!oMail.IsReport)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("This is not a delivery report.");
        return;
    }

    MailReport oReport = oMail.GetReport();
    switch (oReport.ReportType)
    {
        case DeliveryReportType.DeliveryReceipt:
            Console.WriteLine("This is a delivery receipt!");
            break;
        case DeliveryReportType.ReadReceipt:
            Console.WriteLine("This is a read receipt!");
            break;
        case DeliveryReportType.Deleted:
            Console.WriteLine("This is a unread receipt, this email was deleted without read!");
            break;
        case DeliveryReportType.DelayedReport:
            Console.WriteLine("This is a delayed report, server will retry to send it automatically!");
            break;
        default:
            Console.WriteLine("This is a failure report!");
            break;
    }

    Console.WriteLine("OriginalSender: {0}", oReport.OriginalSender);
    Console.WriteLine("OriginalRecipient: {0}", oReport.OriginalRecipient);
    Console.WriteLine("OriginalMessageID: {0}", oReport.OriginalMessageID);

    if (oReport.ReportType == DeliveryReportType.FailureReport || 
        oReport.ReportType == DeliveryReportType.DelayedReport)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("ErrCode: {0}", oReport.ErrCode);
        Console.WriteLine("ErrDescription: {0}", oReport.ErrDescription);
        Console.WriteLine("OriginalSubject: {0}", oReport.OriginalSubject);
        Console.WriteLine("ReportMTA: {0}", oReport.ReportMTA);
        Console.WriteLine(oReport.OriginalHeaders.ToString());
    }
}


[C++/CLI - Parse Bounced Email and Read Receipt]
#include "stdafx.h"

using namespace System;
using namespace System::Text;
using namespace System::Collections;
using namespace System::IO;
using namespace EAGetMail; //add EAGetMail namespace

void ParseReport(String^ emlFile)
{
    Mail ^oMail = gcnew Mail("TryIt");
    oMail->Load(emlFile, false);

    if (!oMail->IsReport)
    {
        Console::WriteLine("This is not a delivery report.");
        return;
    }

    MailReport ^oReport = oMail->GetReport();
    switch (oReport->ReportType)
    {
    case DeliveryReportType::DeliveryReceipt:
        Console::WriteLine("This is a delivery receipt!");
        break;
    case DeliveryReportType::ReadReceipt:
        Console::WriteLine("This is a read receipt!");
        break;
    case DeliveryReportType::Deleted:
        Console::WriteLine("This is a unread receipt, this email was deleted without read!");
        break;
    case DeliveryReportType::DelayedReport:
        Console::WriteLine("This is a delayed report, the server will retry to send it automatically!");
        break;
    default:
        Console::WriteLine("This is a failure report!");
        break;
    }

    Console::WriteLine("OriginalSender: {0}", oReport->OriginalSender);
    Console::WriteLine("OriginalRecipient: {0}", oReport->OriginalRecipient);
    Console::WriteLine("OriginalMessageID: {0}", oReport->OriginalMessageID);

    if (oReport->ReportType == DeliveryReportType::FailureReport ||
        oReport->ReportType == DeliveryReportType::DelayedReport)
    {
        Console::WriteLine("ErrCode: {0}", oReport->ErrCode);
        Console::WriteLine("ErrDescription: {0}", oReport->ErrDescription);
        Console::WriteLine("OriginalSubject: {0}", oReport->OriginalSubject);
        Console::WriteLine("ReportMTA: {0}", oReport->ReportMTA);
        Console::WriteLine(oReport->OriginalHeaders->ToString());
    }
}

Online Tutorials

Parse Non-Delivery Report (NDR) in C# - Tutorial
Parse Non-Delivery Report (NDR) in VB.NET - Tutorial
Parse Non-Delivery Report (NDR) in C++/CLI - Tutorial