@Paul-Winterhalder Amazing! This is perfect for my needs-- thanks so much Paul.

Use API blocking in the cloud code category to block all apis from client that write your user entities. Then clients can only write their entities using cloud-code and there you have the total control

I implemented this pretty easily just using events. Instead of adding a friend I instead send a 'friendRequest' event to the potential friend. once that player views the event and accepts the request the friends are added.

Hi,
Any updates on what's coming up on the Builder API?
I've been using it so far to automate the deployment of cloudscripts during development and has been a great time saver so far. I'd like to know or if you have some kind of a timeframe of when we can expect "Global Properties" to be available. Cause having would allows us to automate deployment of configuration files too.

Also, is the Builder API going to able to make calls to interact with entities? We're migrating from gamesparks, and a useful tool for liveops was to build custom screens that would serve as tools for interacting with user data. Since Braincloud doesn't have that feature, we're looking into rebuilding those screens in Unity, but the missing piece of the puzzle is that we need a way to have access to entity data.

Thank you for your time!
J.B.

Thanks @Paul-Winterhalder and @David-St-Louis-0 . I'm communicating with our web dev and am passing on the information to him. I'll respond here once I get more information from him. Appreciate the quick replies.

Hi,

brainCloud offers a number of APIs for looking up other players. You'll find them all in the Friend service.

As far as looking up players by name, it isn't highly recommended - since names in brainCloud are not guaranteed to be unique (and thus lookups are less deterministic and slower).

It's generally more useful to look up other players by UniversalId - which are guaranteed to be unique.

Now - maybe your app isn't using Universal Identities - so it seems odd to lookup by the UniversalId. Luckily, brainCloud supports a non-login version of a UniversalId - so you can have the user pick a Display Name which will be associated with their account, but they don't actually log in via it (and there's no password for it stored).

To use non-login UniversalIds...

Attach the non-login identity via AttachNonLoginUniversalId() Later on, to update the id, use UpdateUniversalIdLogin() <-- disregard the misleading name - it works for both login and non-login versions of UniversalId Set the player's name to match the universalId (useful for leaderboards) via UpdateUserName() Finally, to look-up a player, use FindUserByExactUniversalId() or FindUserByUniversalIdStartingWith()

Hope that helps!

Paul.