Detect if a user has typed an emoji character in UITextView

Question

I have a UITextView and I need to detect if a user enters an emoji character.

I would think that just checking the unicode value of the newest character would suffic

Answer 1

if your do not want your keyboard to show emoji you can use YOURTEXTFIELD/YOURTEXTVIEW.keyboardType = .ASCIICapable
This will show a keyboard with no emoji

Answer 2

Here is the emoji detection method in Swift. It works fine. Hope it will help others.

 func isEmoji(_ character: String?) -> Bool {

        if character == "" || character == "\n" {
            return false
        }
        let characterRender = UILabel(frame: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: 1, height: 1))
        characterRender.text = character
        characterRender.backgroundColor = UIColor.black  
        characterRender.sizeToFit()
        let rect: CGRect = characterRender.bounds
        UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(rect.size, true, 0.0)

        if let contextSnap:CGContext = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext() {
            characterRender.layer.render(in: contextSnap)
        }

        let capturedImage: UIImage? = (UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext())
        UIGraphicsEndImageContext()
        var colorPixelFound:Bool = false

        let imageRef = capturedImage?.cgImage
        let width:Int = imageRef!.width
        let height:Int = imageRef!.height

        let colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB()

        let rawData = calloc(width * height * 4, MemoryLayout<CUnsignedChar>.stride).assumingMemoryBound(to: CUnsignedChar.self)

            let bytesPerPixel:Int = 4
            let bytesPerRow:Int = bytesPerPixel * width
            let bitsPerComponent:Int = 8

            let context = CGContext(data: rawData, width: Int(width), height: Int(height), bitsPerComponent: Int(bitsPerComponent), bytesPerRow: Int(bytesPerRow), space: colorSpace, bitmapInfo: CGImageAlphaInfo.premultipliedLast.rawValue | CGBitmapInfo.byteOrder32Big.rawValue)



        context?.draw(imageRef!, in: CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: width, height: height))

            var x:Int = 0
            var y:Int = 0
            while (y < height && !colorPixelFound) {

                while (x < width && !colorPixelFound) {

                    let byteIndex: UInt  = UInt((bytesPerRow * y) + x * bytesPerPixel)
                    let red = CGFloat(rawData[Int(byteIndex)])
                    let green = CGFloat(rawData[Int(byteIndex+1)])
                    let blue = CGFloat(rawData[Int(byteIndex + 2)])

                    var h: CGFloat = 0.0
                    var s: CGFloat = 0.0
                    var b: CGFloat = 0.0
                    var a: CGFloat = 0.0

                    var c = UIColor(red:red, green:green, blue:blue, alpha:1.0)
                    c.getHue(&h, saturation: &s, brightness: &b, alpha: &a)

                    b = b/255.0

                    if Double(b) > 0.0 {
                        colorPixelFound = true
                    }
                    x+=1
                }
                x=0
                y+=1
            }

        return colorPixelFound
}

Answer 3

Another solution: https://github.com/woxtu/NSString-RemoveEmoji

Then, after import this extension, you can use it like this:

- (BOOL)textView:(UITextView *)textView shouldChangeTextInRange:(NSRange)range replacementText:(NSString *)text
{
    // Detect if an Emoji is in the string "text"
    if(text.isIncludingEmoji) {
        // Show an UIAlertView, or whatever you want here
        return NO;
    }

    return YES;
}

Hope that helps ;)

Answer 4

Emoji characters length is 2 and so check if string length is 2 in method that is shouldChangeTextInRange: that is called after each key on keyboard hit

- (BOOL)textView:(UITextView *)textView shouldChangeTextInRange:(NSRange)range replacementText:(NSString *)text

{

    // Detect if an Emoji is in the string "text"
    if([text length]==2) {
        // Show an UIAlertView, or whatever you want here
        return YES;
    }
    else
{

       return NO;
}

} 

Answer 5

Well you can detect whether it only has ascii characters using this:

[myString canBeConvertedToEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];

It will say no if it fails (or has emoji). Then you can do a if else statement that does not allow them to click enter or something.

Answer 6

The following are cleaner and more efficient implementations of the code that checks to see if the drawn character has any color or not.

These have been written as category/extension methods to make them easier to use.

Objective-C:

NSString+Emoji.h:

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

@interface NSString (Emoji)

- (BOOL)hasColor;

@end

NSString+Emoji.m:

#import "NSString+Emoji.h"
#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>

@implementation NSString (Emoji)

- (BOOL)hasColor {
    UILabel *characterRender = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero];
    characterRender.text = self;
    characterRender.textColor = UIColor.blackColor;
    characterRender.backgroundColor = UIColor.blackColor;//needed to remove subpixel rendering colors
    [characterRender sizeToFit];

    CGRect rect = characterRender.bounds;
    UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(rect.size, YES, 1);
    CGContextRef contextSnap = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
    [characterRender.layer renderInContext:contextSnap];
    UIImage *capturedImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
    UIGraphicsEndImageContext();

    CGImageRef imageRef = capturedImage.CGImage;
    size_t width = CGImageGetWidth(imageRef);
    size_t height = CGImageGetHeight(imageRef);
    CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
    size_t bytesPerPixel = 4;
    size_t bitsPerComponent = 8;
    size_t bytesPerRow = bytesPerPixel * width;
    size_t size = height * width * bytesPerPixel;
    unsigned char *rawData = (unsigned char *)calloc(size, sizeof(unsigned char));
    CGContextRef context = CGBitmapContextCreate(rawData, width, height,
                                                 bitsPerComponent, bytesPerRow, colorSpace,
                                                 kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast | kCGBitmapByteOrder32Big);
    CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);

    CGContextDrawImage(context, CGRectMake(0, 0, width, height), imageRef);
    CGContextRelease(context);

    BOOL result = NO;
    for (size_t offset = 0; offset < size; offset += bytesPerPixel) {
        unsigned char r = rawData[offset];
        unsigned char g = rawData[offset+1];
        unsigned char b = rawData[offset+2];

        if (r || g || b) {
            result = YES;
            break;
        }
    }

    free(rawData);

    return result;
}

@end

Example usage:

if ([@"