Billionmail/BillionMail · error

sender email is required

Error message

sender email is required

What it means

validateAlertSettings (used by SetBlacklistAlertSettings) requires a non-empty SenderEmail because alert notifications must have a From address. An empty string fails the first check and the settings are not saved.

Source

Thrown at core/internal/controller/settings/settings_v1_set_blacklist_alert_settings.go:68

	jsonData, err := json.MarshalIndent(data, "", "  ")
	if err != nil {
		res.SetError(gerror.Newf(public.LangCtx(ctx, "Failed to encode alert settings: {}", err.Error())))
		return res, nil
	}

	err = gfile.PutContents(alertSettingsFile, string(jsonData))
	if err != nil {
		res.SetError(gerror.Newf(public.LangCtx(ctx, "Failed to save alert settings: {}", err.Error())))
		return res, nil
	}

	res.SetSuccess(public.LangCtx(ctx, "Alert settings saved successfully and test email sent"))
	return res, nil
}

func validateAlertSettings(settings *v1.SetBlacklistAlertSettingsReq) error {
	if settings.SenderEmail == "" {
		return fmt.Errorf("sender email is required")
	}

	if !strings.Contains(settings.SenderEmail, "@") {
		return fmt.Errorf("invalid sender email format")
	}

	if settings.SMTPServer == "" {
		return fmt.Errorf("SMTP server is required")
	}

	if settings.SMTPPort < 1 || settings.SMTPPort > 65535 {
		return fmt.Errorf("SMTP port must be between 1 and 65535")
	}

	if settings.SMTPPassword == "" {
		return fmt.Errorf("SMTP password is required")
	}

View on GitHub (pinned to fc36c76c05)

Solutions

1. Provide a valid sender email, e.g. alerts@example.com
2. Enable the sender field as required in the UI and validate before submit
3. Trim the input and reject whitespace-only values client-side
4. Use an address on a domain the mail server can send from (SPF/DKIM configured)

Example fix

// before
{ "senderEmail": "" }
// after
{ "senderEmail": "alerts@example.com" }

const sender = (settings.senderEmail ?? '').trim();
if (!sender) throw new Error('sender email is required');

function hasSenderEmail(s: unknown): s is { senderEmail: string } {
  return typeof s === 'object' && s !== null && typeof (s as any).senderEmail === 'string' && (s as any).senderEmail.trim() !== '';
}

try {
  await api.setBlacklistAlertSettings(settings);
} catch (e) {
  if (String(e.message).includes('sender email is required')) {
    notify('Sender email is a required field');
    focusSenderField();
  } else throw e;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling SetBlacklistAlertSettings with senderEmail omitted, set to "", or whitespace-only in the request body.

Common situations: Frontend forms submitted without filling the sender field, API scripts that skip optional-looking fields, or clients that send null which deserializes to the empty string.

Understand the failure class

Background: "missing required argument" and "the following required arguments were not provided": what required-argument errors mean and how to fix them — this error's family across 20 libraries.

Related errors

• invalid sender email format
• SMTP server is required
• invalid recipient email format: %s
• required column 'email' not found
• You cannot create more than 5000 batches

AI-assisted analysis of Billionmail/BillionMail@fc36c76c05 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/b66876c48592486b. Report an issue: GitHub.