Detect emoticons in string

Question

I found that you need PHP 7 and MySQL 5.5 to use emoticons in a string that you want to upload to the database. I don't have these specification on my server so I want to give an error message in laravel or php.

Is there a way to detect emoticons in php? If so then I can create a custom validation or something like that?

I've tried alpha_dash validation in Laravel but then it isn't possible to do one old-school like this one :-)

Answer 1

To follow on from Johannes answer I found a solution on a forum somewhere. This regex does the trick :)

    $unicodeRegexp = '([*#0-9](?>\\xEF\\xB8\\x8F)?\\xE2\\x83\\xA3|\\xC2[\\xA9\\xAE]|\\xE2..(\\xF0\\x9F\\x8F[\\xBB-\\xBF])?(?>\\xEF\\xB8\\x8F)?|\\xE3(?>\\x80[\\xB0\\xBD]|\\x8A[\\x97\\x99])(?>\\xEF\\xB8\\x8F)?|\\xF0\\x9F(?>[\\x80-\\x86].(?>\\xEF\\xB8\\x8F)?|\\x87.\\xF0\\x9F\\x87.|..(\\xF0\\x9F\\x8F[\\xBB-\\xBF])?|(((?<zwj>\\xE2\\x80\\x8D)\\xE2\\x9D\\xA4\\xEF\\xB8\\x8F\k<zwj>\\xF0\\x9F..(\k<zwj>\\xF0\\x9F\\x91.)?|(\\xE2\\x80\\x8D\\xF0\\x9F\\x91.){2,3}))?))';