emoji-regex

What is emoji-regex?

The emoji-regex npm package provides a regular expression to match all Emoji-only symbols as per the Unicode Standard. This package is useful for processing text that contains emojis, allowing developers to identify, validate, or manipulate emojis within strings.

What are emoji-regex's main functionalities?

Matching emojis in a string

This code sample demonstrates how to use emoji-regex to find all emojis in a given string. The regex is executed against a string containing emojis, and it will match each emoji character or sequence.

/(emojiRegex())/g.exec('I ❤️ emoji!')

Replacing emojis in a string

This code sample shows how to replace all emojis in a string with a specific word or character. In this case, every emoji in the string is replaced with the word 'emoji'.

'I ❤️ emoji!'.replace(emojiRegex(), 'emoji')

Counting emojis in a string

This code sample is used to count the number of emojis in a string. The match function returns an array of all emojis found, and the length property of the array indicates the total number of emojis.

'👍👍🏿'.match(emojiRegex()).length

Other packages similar to emoji-regex

emojione

Emojione is a package that provides emoji conversion and detection. It includes functionalities to convert unicode emojis to shortnames, images, and vice versa. It is more feature-rich compared to emoji-regex, which focuses solely on regex matching.

node-emoji

Node-emoji is a package that allows for simple emoji handling and conversion in Node.js. It can convert emoji names to unicode and unicode to names, similar to emojione but with a simpler API. Unlike emoji-regex, it does not provide a regex pattern for matching emojis.

emoji-aware

Emoji-aware is a package that splits strings into arrays of Unicode emoji and text. It is useful for separating emojis from other text, but it does not provide regex functionality like emoji-regex.

README

emoji-regex

emoji-regex offers a regular expression to match all emoji symbols and sequences (including textual representations of emoji) as per the Unicode Standard. It’s based on emoji-test-regex-pattern, which generates (at build time) the regular expression pattern based on the Unicode Standard. As a result, emoji-regex can easily be updated whenever new emoji are added to Unicode.

Installation

Via npm:

npm install emoji-regex

In Node.js:

const emojiRegex = require('emoji-regex');
// Note: because the regular expression has the global flag set, this module
// exports a function that returns the regex rather than exporting the regular
// expression itself, to make it impossible to (accidentally) mutate the
// original regular expression.

const text = `
\u{231A}: ⌚ default emoji presentation character (Emoji_Presentation)
\u{2194}\u{FE0F}: ↔️ default text presentation character rendered as emoji
\u{1F469}: 👩 emoji modifier base (Emoji_Modifier_Base)
\u{1F469}\u{1F3FF}: 👩🏿 emoji modifier base followed by a modifier
`;

const regex = emojiRegex();
for (const match of text.matchAll(regex)) {
  const emoji = match[0];
  console.log(`Matched sequence ${ emoji } — code points: ${ [...emoji].length }`);
}

Console output:

Matched sequence ⌚ — code points: 1
Matched sequence ⌚ — code points: 1
Matched sequence ↔️ — code points: 2
Matched sequence ↔️ — code points: 2
Matched sequence 👩 — code points: 1
Matched sequence 👩 — code points: 1
Matched sequence 👩🏿 — code points: 2
Matched sequence 👩🏿 — code points: 2

For maintainers

How to update emoji-regex after new Unicode Standard releases

1. Update emoji-test-regex-pattern as described in its repository.

2. Bump the emoji-test-regex-pattern dependency to the latest version.

3. Update the Unicode data dependency in package.json by running the following commands:

   # Example: updating from Unicode v13 to Unicode v14.
   npm uninstall @unicode/unicode-13.0.0
   npm install @unicode/unicode-14.0.0 --save-dev
   

4. Generate the new output:

   npm run build
   

5. Verify that tests still pass:

   npm test
   

How to publish a new release

1. On the main branch, bump the emoji-regex version number in package.json:

   npm version patch -m 'Release v%s'
   

   Instead of patch, use minor or major as needed.

   Note that this produces a Git commit + tag.

2. Push the release commit and tag:

   git push && git push --tags
   

   Our CI then automatically publishes the new release to npm.

Author

Mathias Bynens

License

emoji-regex is available under the MIT license.