Check if contact exists under google contacts with "ContactsApp.getContact" - google-apps-script

Question

I'm noob regarding scripting so keep that in mind. :-)
I want my script to read from google sheet and and check if that contact exist under google contacts and if not to create one.
Contacts are checked by email and have label "Client". I can't get if statement to confirm if contact exist or not. If i remove If for checking contacts it will create contact for every single entry so i think that that part is fine, but i need to fix part how to check if contact already exists so it wouldn't create duplicated entry.
function addClinet() {
var ss = SpreadsheetApp.openById('XXXX');
var sheetNew = ss.getSheetByName('NewClient');
var Avals = sheetNew.getRange('B1:B').getValues();
var lastRow = Avals.filter(String).length;
for (var i = 2 ; i <= lastRow; i++){
var nameID = sheetNew.getRange(i, 2).getValue();
var emailID = sheetNew.getRange(i, 8).getValue();
var mobID = sheetNew.getRange(i, 9).getValue();
var firstName = nameID.split(' ').slice(0, -1).join(' ');
var lastName = nameID.split(' ').slice(-1).join(' ');
var regex = new RegExp (/^\w/);
var firstChar = regex.exec(mobID);
var contacts = ContactsApp.getContact(emailID);
if (contacts == null){
if (firstChar == 8){
var mobID = 'xxx' + mobID;
}
var contact = ContactsApp.createContact(firstName,lastName, emailID);
var contacts = ContactsApp.getContact(emailID);
contact.addPhone(ContactsApp.Field.WORK_PHONE, mobID);
var group = ContactsApp.getContactGroup("Clients");
group.addContact(contact);
}
}
}
Thx

Answer 1

I wouldn't use the ContactsApp.getContact([email]) function -- For whatever reason Google Apps Script's contacts search by email is excruciatingly slow. Since it sounds like you have a number of contacts that you are sorting through at any given time, I would recommend you use the same -- instead of searching for the email address through Google Apps Script (this takes about 16-20 seconds PER CONTACT)
Using the following function you will be able to create one large JSON object of all of your contacts, with their email addresses as the key so you can quickly test whether an email address is present in your contacts (this takes about 11 seconds for around 5000 contacts:
function emailsasJSON() {
var emailjson = {}
var myContacts = ContactsApp.getContactGroup('Clients').getContacts();
for (var i = 0; i < myContacts.length; i++) {
var emails = myContacts[i].getEmails();
var phonesobj = myContacts[i].getPhones();
var phones = {}
for (var j = 0; j < phonesobj.length; j++) {
phones[phonesobj[j].getPhoneNumber().replace(/[_)(\s.-]/g,'')] = 1;
}
for (var j = 0; j < emails.length; j++) {
emailjson[emails[j].getAddress().toLowerCase()] = {id: myContacts[i].getId(), phones: phones};
}
}
Logger.log(JSON.stringify(emailjson))
return emailjson;
}
Using the emailjson object you can compare each of your contacts MUCH faster -- It will create this in about 10 seconds -- we will use this later.
Secondly, there are some things in your code that I would clean up -- it looks to me like you have a sheet with the name in column B, email in column H, and mobile number in column I.
Instead of collecting all of those values individually per cell (takes a long time), you should collect the entire data set as an array and then work with it that way:
function addClinet() {
var ss = SpreadsheetApp.openById('XXXX');
var sheetNew = ss.getSheetByName('NewClient');
var clientsgroup = ContactsApp.getContactGroup('Clients')
//this is where we will insert the function from above to get the emailjson obj
var emailjson = emailsasJSON()
var contactarray = sheetNew.getDataRange().getValues();
for (var i = 1 ; i < contactarray.length; i++){
var name = contactarray[i][1]
var email = contactarray[i][7]
var phone = contactarray[i][8]
if(emailjson[email.toLowerCase()].id) { //check if email exists
if(!emailjson[email.toLowerCase()]['phones'][phone.replace(/[_)(\s.-]/g,'')]) { //if email exists but phone doesn't, add phone
ContactsApp.getContactById(emailjson[email.toLowerCase()].id).addPhone(ContactsApp.Field.MOBILE_PHONE, phone)
emailjson[email.toLowerCase()]['phones'][phone.replace(/[_)(\s.-]/g,'')] = 1; //add it to the emailjson object in case there are more iterations of this contact in the sheet
}
} else { //add new contact if it doesn't exist
var newcontact = ContactsApp.createContact(name.split(' ')[0],name.split(' ')[1], email)
newcontact.addPhone(ContactsApp.Field.MOBILE_PHONE, phone)
emailjson[email.toLowerCase()]['id'] = newcontact.getId();
emailjson[email.toLowerCase()]['phones'][phone.toString().replace(/[_)(\s.-]/g,'')] = 1;
clientsgroup.addContact(newcontact)
}
}
}
I don't have your datasheet to error check this but this should speed up your function by a considerable amount. Let me know if it throws any errors or, if you could give me an example sheet, I could test it.
Lastly, I imagine that this isn't a client list that you consistently update, so I would take them off of this sheet and move them elsewhere, although it would take a considerable number of contacts on the list to bog this function down.