Asynchronously sending Emails in C#?

Question

I\'m developing an application where a user clicks/presses enter on a certain button in a window, the application does some checks and determines whether to send out a coupl

Answer 1

SmtpClient.SendAsync Method

Sample

using System;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Mail;
using System.Net.Mime;
using System.Threading;
using System.ComponentModel;
namespace Examples.SmptExamples.Async
{
    public class SimpleAsynchronousExample
    {
        static bool mailSent = false;
        private static void SendCompletedCallback(object sender, AsyncCompletedEventArgs e)
        {
            // Get the unique identifier for this asynchronous operation.
             String token = (string) e.UserState;

            if (e.Cancelled)
            {
                 Console.WriteLine("[{0}] Send canceled.", token);
            }
            if (e.Error != null)
            {
                 Console.WriteLine("[{0}] {1}", token, e.Error.ToString());
            } else
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Message sent.");
            }
            mailSent = true;
        }
        public static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // Command line argument must the the SMTP host.
            SmtpClient client = new SmtpClient(args[0]);
            // Specify the e-mail sender. 
            // Create a mailing address that includes a UTF8 character 
            // in the display name.
            MailAddress from = new MailAddress("jane@contoso.com", 
               "Jane " + (char)0xD8+ " Clayton", 
            System.Text.Encoding.UTF8);
            // Set destinations for the e-mail message.
            MailAddress to = new MailAddress("ben@contoso.com");
            // Specify the message content.
            MailMessage message = new MailMessage(from, to);
            message.Body = "This is a test e-mail message sent by an application. ";
            // Include some non-ASCII characters in body and subject. 
            string someArrows = new string(new char[] {'\u2190', '\u2191', '\u2192', '\u2193'});
            message.Body += Environment.NewLine + someArrows;
            message.BodyEncoding =  System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;
            message.Subject = "test message 1" + someArrows;
            message.SubjectEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;
            // Set the method that is called back when the send operation ends.
            client.SendCompleted += new 
            SendCompletedEventHandler(SendCompletedCallback);
            // The userState can be any object that allows your callback  
            // method to identify this send operation. 
            // For this example, the userToken is a string constant. 
            string userState = "test message1";
            client.SendAsync(message, userState);
            Console.WriteLine("Sending message... press c to cancel mail. Press any other key to exit.");
            string answer = Console.ReadLine();
            // If the user canceled the send, and mail hasn't been sent yet, 
            // then cancel the pending operation. 
            if (answer.StartsWith("c") && mailSent == false)
            {
                client.SendAsyncCancel();
            }
            // Clean up.
            message.Dispose();
            Console.WriteLine("Goodbye.");
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

Just because this is a little vague...I will be brief...

There are a lot of ways to do asynchronous or parallel work in c#/.net etc.

The fastest way to do what you want is to use a background worker thread which will avoid locking up your UI.

A tip with background worker threads : you cannot directly update the UI from them (thread affinity and Marshalling is just something you learn to deal with...)

Another thing to consider...if you use the standard System.Net.Mail type stuff to send the emails...be careful how you craft your logic. If you isolate it all in some method and call it over and over, it will likely have to tear down and rebuild the connection to the mail server each time and the latency involved in authentication etc will still slow the whole thing down unnecessarily. Send multiple e-mails through a single open connection to the mail server when possible.

Answer 3

Here is a fire and forget approach together with async using .Net 4.5.2+:

BackgroundTaskRunner.FireAndForgetTaskAsync(async () =>
{
    SmtpClient smtpClient = new SmtpClient(); // using configuration file settings
    MailMessage message = new MailMessage(); // TODO: Initialize appropriately
    await smtpClient.SendMailAsync(message);
});

where BackgroundTaskRunner is:

public static class BackgroundTaskRunner
{     
    public static void FireAndForgetTask(Action action)
    {
        HostingEnvironment.QueueBackgroundWorkItem(cancellationToken => // .Net 4.5.2+ required
        {
            try
            {
                action();
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                // TODO: handle exception
            }
        });
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Using async
    /// </summary>
    public static void FireAndForgetTaskAsync(Func<Task> action)
    {
        HostingEnvironment.QueueBackgroundWorkItem(async cancellationToken => // .Net 4.5.2+ required
        {
            try
            {
                await action();
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                // TODO: handle exception
            }
        });
    }
}

Works like a charm on Azure App Services.

Answer 4

Using the Task Parallel Library in .NET 4.0, you can do:

Parllel.Invoke(() => { YourSendMailMethod(); });

Also, see cristina manu's blog post about Parallel.Invoke() vs. explicit task management.

Answer 5

As of .NET 4.5 SmtpClient implements async awaitable method SendMailAsync. As a result, to send email asynchronously is as following:

public async Task SendEmail(string toEmailAddress, string emailSubject, string emailMessage)
{
    var message = new MailMessage();
    message.To.Add(toEmailAddress);

    message.Subject = emailSubject;
    message.Body = emailMessage;

    using (var smtpClient = new SmtpClient())
    {
        await smtpClient.SendMailAsync(message);
    }
} 

Answer 6

Try this:

var client = new System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient("smtp.server");
var message = new System.Net.Mail.MailMessage() { /* provide its properties */ };
client.SendAsync(message, null);