Question

I am trying to full text search a column, but also be able to group by it. Does that mean it needs to be attribute? I want to still be able to search on the column though.

Answer 1

Yes, you need attribute to use group by in Sphinx.
For example you could use crc32(text) of your text column. Like:

sql_query = select text, crc32(text) as text_crc from mytable
sql_attr_uint = text_crc

So, text will be used for full-text search and text_crc for group by.