How to get FB group by alias (FQL) - facebook-fql

Question

Does there exist any way to get group by it's alias (username)?
SELECT id, name, pic_big, type, url, username FROM profile WHERE username='somealias'
works for pages, but doesn't works for groups! For groups it returns
(#803) Some of the aliases you requested do not exist: somealias

Answer 1

profile table is like a parent class for user, group, page, event, or application tables. (see https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/fql/profile/)
It has field username but values in this field are filled from related tables, and table group has no field username (see https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/fql/group). So when we query profile using where id = someid we get such results:
SELECT id, name, pic_big, type, url, username FROM profile WHERE id= '195466193802264'
{
"data": [
{
"id": 195466193802264,
"name": "Facebook Developers",
"pic_big": "https://www.facebook.com/images/litestand/bookmarks/sidebar/icons/groups/icon-default.png",
"type": "group",
"url": "https://www.facebook.com/groups/195466193802264/",
"username": ""
}
]
}
As you can see, username is empty for group.
update
After some investigation I found that groups CAN have usernames. Oficially they can't, but group's email part before # symbol is it's username.
When you query the profile if you only specify its username you receive nothing. But if you'll add its name your group will appear.
Example:
SELECT id, name, pic_big, type, url, username FROM profile
WHERE username = 'rock.mfc' and type = 'group'
will result
{
"data": [
]
}
But the query
SELECT id, name, pic_big, type, url, username FROM profile
WHERE name = 'ROCK MUSIC FANS CLUB' and username = 'rock.mfc' and type = 'group'
will give the required result:
{
"data": [
{
"id": 268045023346892,
"name": "ROCK MUSIC FANS CLUB",
"pic_big": "https://www.facebook.com/images/litestand/bookmarks/sidebar/icons/groups/icon-guitar.png",
"type": "group",
"url": "https://www.facebook.com/groups/rock.mfc/",
"username": "rock.mfc"
}
]
}
Hope it'll help you.