How to get FB group by alias (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.