This library will find all emoji in an input string and return information about each emoji character. It supports emoji with skin tone modifiers, as well as the composite emoji that are made up of multiple people.

composer require p3k/emoji-detector

Or include src/Emoji.php in your project, and make sure the map.json and regexp.json files are available in the same folder as Emoji.php. You don't need any of the other files for use in your own projects.

$input = "Hello 👍🏼 World 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦";
$emoji = Emoji\detect_emoji($input);

print_r($emoji);

The function returns an array with details about each emoji found in the string.

Array
(
  [0] => Array
    (
      [emoji] => 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦
      [short_name] => man-woman-boy-boy
      [num_points] => 7
      [points_hex] => Array
        (
          [0] => 1F468
          [1] => 200D
          [2] => 1F469
          [3] => 200D
          [4] => 1F466
          [5] => 200D
          [6] => 1F466
        )
      [hex_str] => 1F468-200D-1F469-200D-1F466-200D-1F466
      [skin_tone] =>
    )
  [1] => Array
    (
      [emoji] => 👍🏼
      [short_name] => +1
      [num_points] => 2
      [points_hex] => Array
        (
          [0] => 1F44D
          [1] => 1F3FC
        )

      [hex_str] => 1F44D-1F3FC
      [skin_tone] => skin-tone-3
    )
)

• emoji - The emoji sequence found, as the original byte sequence. You can output this to show the original emoji.
• short_name - The short name of the emoji, as defined by Slack's emoji data.
• num_points - The number of unicode code points that this emoji is composed of.
• points_hex - An array of each unicode code point that makes up this emoji. These are returned as hex strings. This will also include "invisible" characters such as the ZWJ character and skin tone modifiers.
• hex_str - A list of all unicode code points in their hex form separated by hyphens. This string is present in the Slack emoji data array.
• skin_tone - If a skin tone modifier was used in the emoji, this field indicates which skin tone, since the short_name will not include the skin tone.

Since simply counting the number of unicode characters in a string does not tell you how many visible emoji are in the string, determining whether a single character is an emoji is more involved. This function will return the emoji data only if the string contains a single emoji character, and false otherwise.

$emoji = Emoji\is_single_emoji('👨‍👩‍👦‍👦');
print_r($emoji);

Array
(
    [emoji] => 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦
    [short_name] => man-woman-boy-boy
    [num_points] => 7
    [points_hex] => Array
        (
            [0] => 1F468
            [1] => 200D
            [2] => 1F469
            [3] => 200D
            [4] => 1F466
            [5] => 200D
            [6] => 1F466
        )

    [hex_str] => 1F468-200D-1F469-200D-1F466-200D-1F466
    [skin_tone] =>
)

$emoji = Emoji\is_single_emoji('😻🐈');
// false

Copyright 2017 by Aaron Parecki.

Available under the MIT license.

Emoji data sourced from iamcal/emoji-data under the MIT license.

Emoji parsing regex sourced from EmojiOne under the MIT license.