Retrieve SteamID from Steam API by passing Steam Username

Question

I am wondering is there a way that if a user enters their 'Steam Username' that you can then find their 'SteamID'. I have been looking all through the 'Steam API' and have found no information about this.

My idea was for a user to enter their 'Steam Username' into a box and when they submit the form, I am able to fire a request of to a steam web service which returns me back that user's 'SteamID'.

My question is abit different than other users as I just want to just search by entering the Steam Username. It should not matter if a user has got a CustomURL or not, as when I send the Steam Username to a 'Web Service' it should return back a users ID.

If anyone has any information that could help me with this it would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The Steam API is indeed not the best documented API.

I have done a similar task before and I found this page helpful:

The page also includes an example request URL, it looks like this:

http://api.steampowered.com/ISteamUser/ResolveVanityURL/v0001/?key=YOU-API_KEY&vanityurl=USER_NAME

Answer 2

At the time of writing this is not possible. There is no user search function in the API.

As a workaround in my own app (C#) I simulated the AJAX request made by the Steam Community search page and parsed the response HTML. Bear in mind that the AJAX request needs a session ID from a cookie that's set by the page.