java - Check if letter is emoji

Question

I want to check if a letter is a emoji. I've found some similiar questions on so and found this regex:

private final String emo_regex = "([\u20a0-\u32ff\ud83c\udc00-\ud83d\udeff\udbb9\udce5-\udbb9\udcee])";

However, when I do the following in a sentence like:

for (int k=0; k<letters.length;k++) {    
    if (letters[k].matches(emo_regex)) {
        emoticon.add(letters[k]);
    }
}

It doesn't add any letters with any emoji. I've also tried with a Matcher and a Pattern, but that didn't work either. Is there something wrong with the regex or am I missing something obvious in my code?

This is how I get the letter:

sentence = "Jij staat op 10 ??"
String[] letters = sentence.split("");

The last ?? should be recognized and added to emoticon

Answer 1

You could use emoji4j library. The following should solve the issue.

String htmlifiedText = EmojiUtils.htmlify(text);
// regex to identify html entitities in htmlified text
Matcher matcher = htmlEntityPattern.matcher(htmlifiedText);

while (matcher.find()) {
    String emojiCode = matcher.group();
    if (isEmoji(emojiCode)) {

        emojis.add(EmojiUtils.getEmoji(emojiCode).getEmoji());
    }
}