Guide 4 of 8
OTP Extraction
MailFork extracts OTP codes automatically. A single SDK call polls until the email arrives, then returns
the extracted code. Requires the emails:read scope on your API key.
Basic OTP Extraction
const result = await mf.emails.extractOtp({
inbox: '[email protected]',
waitTimeoutMs: 15000,
receivedAfter: new Date(Date.now() - 5 * 60 * 1000), // last 5 minutes only
});
console.log(result.otp); // "482910"pattern is provided, MailFork uses a ranked library of common OTP patterns
(6-digit codes, "Your code is X", "verification code: X", and more) and returns the highest-confidence match.
Using an Alias recommended
const result = await mf.emails.extractOtp({
inbox: '[email protected]',
aliasTag: 'run-42',
waitTimeoutMs: 15000,
});
console.log(result.otp); // "482910"Custom Regex Pattern
If your app sends OTPs in a non-standard format, provide a pattern.
The pattern is matched against the full email body. The first capture group is returned as the OTP.
const result = await mf.emails.extractOtp({
inbox: '[email protected]',
pattern: 'verification code[:\\s]+([0-9]{6})',
waitTimeoutMs: 15000,
});
console.log(result.otp); // "482910"(...) is what gets returned as result.otp.
Confidence Score
Every extraction result includes a confidence value from 0.0 to 1.0.
Scores below 0.6 indicate the match may be unreliable — the pattern matched but the surrounding context
didn't strongly resemble an OTP email. Treat low-confidence results with caution.
const result = await mf.emails.extractOtp({
inbox: '[email protected]',
waitTimeoutMs: 15000,
});
console.log(result.otp); // "482910"
console.log(result.confidence); // 0.95
if (result.confidence < 0.6) {
console.warn('Low confidence OTP match — verify manually');
}Timeout and Not Found
If no matching email arrives within waitTimeoutMs,
the SDK throws an OtpNotFoundError. Catch it to handle the failure case explicitly.
import { MailForkClient, OtpNotFoundError } from '@mailfork/sdk';
try {
const result = await mf.emails.extractOtp({
inbox: '[email protected]',
waitTimeoutMs: 15000,
});
console.log(result.otp);
} catch (e) {
if (e instanceof OtpNotFoundError) {
// No OTP email arrived within 15 seconds
// Check that your app is actually sending the email
console.error('OTP not received in time');
} else {
throw e;
}
}