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Mailinator in 5 minutes

This quick tutorial will guide you through:

  • ✅ Getting Your API Key
  • ✅ Getting the Latest Message
  • ✅ Reading the Output
  • ✅ Getting Email links

Let's begin 🚀

info

We're using curl to demonstrate these requests. You can copy + paste it into your Terminal (macOS/Linux) or Command Prompt (Windows) to follow along.

Scenario​

Let's say you receive an email that contains a link to a friend's website. We can use Mailinator's API to get the message and the link programmatically.

1. Getting Your API Key​

Before we begin, you'll need you API Key (or API token) from your account. To get it:

  1. Log in to your Mailinator Dashboard.
  2. Go to Team Settings.
  3. Copy your API Token and your Private Domain.

Don't have an account? Signup for a free one.

2. Getting the Latest Message​

Step A: Send the Email

Send an email from your personal account to first@YOURDOMAIN.testinator.com. Include a link in the body: <a href="https://www.example.com">Verify Account</a>

Step B: Get messages from the Inbox

Now, use the endpoint below to grab the messages from your first inbox. We will use limit=1 to see only the most recent one.

curl -L "https://api.mailinator.com/api/v2/domains/private/inboxes/first?limit=1&token=YourAPIKeyHere"

3. Reading the Output​

Check your response! It should look something like this:

The Response

{
    "cursor": "6066bb5ae7eb1c4a6fe5811f",
    "msgs": [
        {
            "subject": "first email",
            "domain": "testinbox.testinator.com",
            "origfrom": "Chris Tester <chris@tester.com>",
            "from": "Chris Tester",
            "id": "first-1768340314-09630157217903",
            "source": "EMAIL",
            "to": "first",
            "time": 1768340314000,
            "seconds_ago": 47
        }
    ],
    "domain": "private",
    "to": "first"
}

Mailinator returns a JSON object, summarizing your email.

Locate the id field. This is the unique identifier for that specific message. Copy it for the next step.

Now we will use the Get Links endpoint. This is the "magic" step because it parses the email for you and extracts all URLs into a list.

Step C: Get the links from the email

Replace {MSG_ID} with the ID you copied above.

curl -L "https://api.mailinator.com/api/v2/domains/private/inboxes/first/messages/{MSG_ID}/links?token=YOUR_TOKEN"

The Response

{
    "links": [
        "https:\/\/www.example.com"
    ]
}

Mailinator returns a simple array of links. (Note: the formatting is valid JSON and the extra slahes can be removed using a JSON parser if needed).

Endless possibilities​

In less than 5 minutes you've learned how to retreive an email with one API call and pull the links from it with a second API call. Together, these two calls took less than a second in response time.

Now imagine the possiblities in automating email workflows!

  • Need to confirm a purchase confirmation has the right order number, text, images, links, etc? Easy!
  • Need to test the signup flow for a new user, but never did it because grabbing that confirmation email was too difficult? Not anymore.
  • Or you simply want to confirm that every email generated from your system is correctly sent? Done!
Questions + Troubleshooting
  1. Since Mailinator is receive-only our demonstration has you sending the email.
  2. Make sure you replaced YourPrivateDomain with your actual Private Domain
  3. If you changed the inbox in the sendto, make sure you update it in the curl request as well. For example we are using first, but if you used a different inbox like fred you'll need to update the url such as /domains/private/inboxes/{changehere}
  4. Make sure you replace YourAPIKeyHere with your API Key
  5. Make sure you replace {MSG_ID} with the ID of the message. It looks like first-1768340314-09630157217903. No quotes necessary.