How to send Lumens to an uninitialised stellar address pragmatically

Question

I am new to stellar so please bear with my question if it sounds too basic. So, using the stellar laboratory, I created two accounts lets name 1 and 2. I funded the 1st account with test-net coins using friend-bot and left the 2nd account empty. Now as I understand that an account to be active on stellar network, it should have a minimum balance of about 1XLM. So using the transaction builder, I tried to perform a Payment Operation by trying to transfer 2XLM to the 2nd account. However I recieved the following response :

{
  "type": "https://stellar.org/horizon-errors/transaction_failed",
  "title": "Transaction Failed",
  "status": 400,
  "detail": "The transaction failed when submitted to the stellar network. The `extras.result_codes` field on this response contains further details.  Descriptions of each code can be found at: https://www.stellar.org/developers/learn/concepts/list-of-operations.html",
  "extras": {
    "envelope_xdr": "AAAAAKNyr+6/r2REKzMV3sOL4jztg1HSdqlQhmthUU41BjPdAAAAZAAEmkQAAAADAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABAAAAAAAAAAEAAAAAmWhqbEZTUrZWFtvR1HU7VUW0pp3BwN4E9h4iQwvMr9kAAAAAAAAAAAExLQAAAAAAAAAAATUGM90AAABAHvtdpnjhq3usHFphQ/4naDHbKVhu+QqD8UFSavo/qlGo7Yiz/dLI3lQ0fmfa37uvwXWsYAn8mObDkrTjofc3Aw==",
    "result_codes": {
      "transaction": "tx_failed",
      "operations": [
        "op_no_destination"
      ]
    },
    "result_xdr": "AAAAAAAAAGT/////AAAAAQAAAAAAAAAB////+wAAAAA="
  }
}

So can someone tell me which operation I need to use to send XLM to an un-initialised address so I can activate it, not by using friendbot.

Answer 1

The very first payment to an uninitialized account has to be performed with the createAccount operation.

Answer 2

The first time you're trying to send tokens to an uninitialised account, you have to use the createAccount method on Operations ie

const transaction = new StellarSdk.TransactionBuilder(senderAccount, {
    fee: feeInStroops,
    networkPassphrase, // Use the testnet passphrase
  })
    .addOperation(
      StellarSdk.Operation.createAccount({
        destination: 'GCVTRT3OP3B7BJJDHHXG2UFMI76RBZDSYUDD37WUKVF2IV6TK6RRJXXN', // Replace with the recipient's public key
        asset: StellarSdk.Asset.native(), // Use Stellar Lumens (XLM)
        startingBalance: '1', // The amount to send
      })
    )
    .setTimeout(300)
    .build();