question

I have implemented a system where a player can send a friend request to another player by writing to their read-only data (using a cloud script) and waiting for that player to accept, and returning an "accept" message - as described in some of the answers on the forums. Works great!

This is fine in a game when I know the playfabID of the friend I want to add.

But if I only know the player's display name (and not their playfabID), it's hard to write to that player's read-only data. Here's a cloud-script solution that I came up with, but it seems really messy. Is there a better way to do this?

handlers.AddFriendByName = function (args, context) {
    var myID = currentPlayerId;
    var friendName = args.friendName;
    var myName = args.myName;
        
    //Try to add friend for player ID
    var result = server.AddFriend({ "PlayFabId": myID, "FriendTitleDisplayName": friendName });
    //If fail, return {} meaning friend name was not found
    if (result.apiError != null) {        
        return {};
    }
    
    //Hack to find friend ID:
    //List all friends and search for the one we just added
    var friendsresult = server.GetFriendsList({ "PlayFabId": myID });    
    var friendID = "";
    if ("Friends" in friendsresult) {
        var friends = friendsresult.Friends;
        for (var i = 0; i < friends.length ; i++) {
            if (friends[i].TitleDisplayName == friendName) {
                friendID = friends[i].FriendPlayFabId;
                break;
            }
        }
    }
    if (friendID == "")
        return {};


    //Remove friend from playfab (so that we can send a request instead)
    server.RemoveFriend({ "PlayFabId": myID, "FriendPlayFabId": friendID });
            
    //Call handler function to create a new friend request using the friend ID
    var requestArgs = { "friendID": friendID, "myName": myName };
    handlers.addFriendRequest(requestArgs, null);


    //return {ID}
    return {ID : friendID}
}