Email Address Validation for ASP.NET

Question

What do you use to validate an email address on a ASP.NET form. I want to make sure that it contains no XSS exploits.

This is ASP.NET 1.1

Answer 1

You should always do server side validaton as well.

public bool IsValidEmailAddress(string email)
{
    try
    {
        var emailChecked = new System.Net.Mail.MailAddress(email);
        return true;
    }
    catch
    {
        return false;
    }
}

UPDATE

You can also use the EmailAddressAttribute in System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations. Then there is no need for a try-catch to it's a cleaner solution.

public bool IsValidEmailAddress(string email)
{
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(email) && new EmailAddressAttribute().IsValid(email))
        return true;
    else
        return false;
}

Note that the IsNullOrEmpty check is also needed otherwise a null value will return true.