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javajakarta-mailspecial-characters

InternetAddress allows square bracket in localpart - bug?

As far as my research went, the string [docxa][email protected] is not a syntactically valid email-address, as the square brackets are not in a quoted-string.

However, the class javax.mail.internet.InternetAddress accepts this address as a valid one, because it simply strips the [docxa] part from the address in its .parse(..) method, which is invoked by the constructor.

Code comment in InternetAddress.parse(String, boolean, boolean) indicates, the implementers weren't sure themselves:

    case '[':   // a domain-literal, probably

That's the test I created to verify the problem, it's failing:

@Test
public void givenUnquotedEmailAddressWithSquareBracketsInLocalPartThenValidationShouldFail() {
    try {
        new InternetAddress("[docxa][email protected]", true).validate();
        fail("address should be invalid");
    } catch (AddressException e) {
        // expected
    }
}

 

So, is this a bug in InternetAddress, or is my research or my understanding of it incomplete?

Solution

  • Yes, it's a bug that InternetAddress strips off the leading "[docxa]".