Get steamID by user nickname

Question

Is it possible to get user's steamID by his nickname? I didn't find solution in steam API documentation. The only one thing that I found is an old post on http://dev.dota2.com :

You can use this to search the Dota2 API directly using the player_name option of GetMatchHistory You can then find their 32-bit ID in the list and then convert it to a 64-bit ID.

But now GetMatchHistory function does not have player_name parameter. Now it requires account_id.

So how the websites like http://dotabuff.com/search?q=Dendi get this info?

Answer 1

You can use

GET http://api.steampowered.com/ISteamUser/ResolveVanityURL/v0001/

to get the SteamID from the custom URL of a Steam Profile. See http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/WebAPI/ResolveVanityURL

You can't get the steamID from someone's current nickname because nicknames can change and are not unique.

Answer 2

Using PHP and the Steam Condenser project, you can accomplish this.

require_once('steam/steam-condenser.php');

$playername = 'NAMEOFPLAYER';
try
{
    $id = SteamId::create($playername);
} 
catch (SteamCondenserException $s)
{
    // Error occurred
}

echo $id->getSteamId;

There are usage examples in the wiki for the project if you need more information.