Property DKIM

The ResponsiveEmail web service can also be used for DKIM signing. If you include a private key in the input JSON, it will be used to create a signature that is added to the email MIME.

It is even possible to specify multiple keys if you want to add more than a single signature to the mail. The private key should be base64 encoded. It is not necessary to include the header and footer lines that you normally see in private keys, although it is allowed.

DKIM properties

For a valid signature, you need to specify a domain, selector and private key. The hashing algorithm is optional. If it is not set, the "sha256" algorithm is used.

When a receiving party receives a signed email, it will use the domain and selector to do a DNS lookup to retrieve the public key. With this public key it can verify whether the email was correctly signed.

By default, all the regular MIME header fields are used to sign the email: "from", "to", "message-id", "subject" et cetera. If you have custom fields that you want to include in the signature too, you can add an extra "headers" property holding an array of the headers that you also want to be signed. This is often used to sign the "feedback-id" header that is required for Gmail feedback loops.

A DKIM signature can have an expire time. By adding the "expire" property to your JSON, you can include this expiration time in the signature. The expire time is optional however.

If you add multiple DKIM keys to your message you can specify the order in which they are used to sign the MIME. This may be important for certain mail servers that only use the first few DKIM signatures to check the validity of a message. The signature of a DKIM key with low priority will appear at the top of your message.

Example Code

{
    "from" : "info@example.com",
    "subject" : "A signed email",
    "headers" : {
        "feedback-id": "a:b:c:d"
    },
    "dkim": {
        "domain": "example.com",
        "selector": "dkim1",
        "key": "MIIBOwIBAAJ....MbXHLl/QHFg==",
        "headers": [ "feedback-id" ],
        "expire": "2016-10-01 00:00:00",
        "priority": 10
    },
    "content": {
        "blocks": [ {
            "type": "text",
            "content": "This is example text"
        }, {
            "type": "image",
            "src": "http://www.example.com/example.jpeg"
        } ]
    }
}

The above example demonstrates how you can add a DKIM signature to your email. It is an advanced signature, because it will also sign the custom "feedback-id" header.

If you want to add multiple signatures to an email, you can specify multiple DKIM signatures. In the next example two signatures are going to be added to the mail, one with an expire time, and one without:

{
    "from" : "info@example.com",
    "subject" : "A signed email",
    "dkim": [ {
        "domain": "example.com",
        "selector": "dkim1",
        "key": "MIIBOwIBAAJ....MbXHLl/QHFg==",
        "expire": "2016-10-01 00:00:00",
        "priority": 10
    }, {
        "domain": "example.com",
        "selector": "dkim2",
        "key": "MD8CAQACCQD....2AjNECBB0/WTE"
        "priority": -2
    } ],
    "content": {
        "blocks": [ {
            "type": "text",
            "content": "This is example text"
        }, {
            "type": "image",
            "src": "http://www.example.com/example.jpeg"
        } ]
    }
}

To help readability, we have shortened the private key in the two above examples.