You need to send e-mail to an e-mail address using a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server.
Use the SmtpMail and MailMessage classes in the System.Web.Mail namespace.
The classes in the System.Web.Mail namespace provide a bare-bones wrapper for the Collaboration Data Objects for Windows 2000 (CDOSYS) component. They allow you to compose and send formatted e-mail messages using SMTP.
Using these types is easy. You simply create a MailMessage object, specify the sender and recipient e-mail address, and place the message content in the Body property.
MailMessage myMessage = new MailMessage(); myMessage.To = "someone@somewhere.com"; myMessage.From = "me@somewhere.com"; myMessage.Subject = "Hello"; myMessage.Priority = MailPriority.High; myMessage.Body = "This is the message!";
If you want, you can send an HTML message by changing the message format and using HTML tags.
myMessage.BodyFormat = MailFormat.Html; myMessage.Body = @"<HTML><HEAD></HEAD>" + @"<BODY>This is the message!</BODY></HTML>";
You can even add file attachments using the MailMessage.Attachments collection and the MailAttachment class.
MailAttachment myAttachment = new MailAttachment("c:\mypic.gif"); myMessage.Attachments.Add(myAttachment);
To send the message, you simply specify the SMTP server name and call the SmptMail.Send method.
SmtpMail.SmtpServer = "test.mailserver.com"; SmtpMail.Send(myMessage);
However, there is a significant catch to using the SmtpMail class to send an e-mail message. This class requires a local SMTP server or relay server on your network. In addition, the SmtpMail class doesn't support authentication, so if your SMTP server requires a username and password, you won't be able to send any mail. To overcome these problems, you can use the CDOSYS component directly through COM interop ( assuming you have a server version of Windows or Microsoft Exchange).
Note | Remember that the SMTP protocol can't be used to retrieve e-mail. For this task, you need the POP3 or IMAP protocol, neither of which is exposed natively in the .NET Framework. |
For more information about using and configuring your own SMTP server, consult a dedicated book on IIS.