title: PHP Strip Special Characters (Emoji) from String
body: <p>I need to strip the emoji from a string, we can store the info, but it breaks  our xml export because of the special characters used in emoji. I'd like to use PHP to strip the emoji out before it ever makes it to the database
  .
  Here is a sample of one such emoji: <code>&amp;#128522;</code></p>
  
  <p>I've tried multiple methods described in this thread: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12807176/php-writing-a-simple-removeemoji-function">PHP : writing a simple removeEmoji function</a></p>
  
  <p>However they do not work. Can someone please suggest a way to strip all of these?</p>
  
  <p>What I've tried so far that does not work to strip the above example emoji:</p>
  
  <pre><code>function removeEmoji($string) {
      return preg_replace('/&amp;#x(e[0-9a-f][0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|f[0-8][0-9a-f][0-9a-f])/i', '', $string);
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I've also tried:</p>
  
  <pre><code>public static function removeEmoji($text) {
  
      $clean_text = "";
  
      // Match Emoticons
      $regexEmoticons = '/[\x{1F600}-\x{1F64F}]/u';
      $clean_text = preg_replace($regexEmoticons, '', $text);
  
      // Match Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs
      $regexSymbols = '/[\x{1F300}-\x{1F5FF}]/u';
      $clean_text = preg_replace($regexSymbols, '', $clean_text);
  
      // Match Transport And Map Symbols
      $regexTransport = '/[\x{1F680}-\x{1F6FF}]/u';
      $clean_text = preg_replace($regexTransport, '', $clean_text);
  
      // Match Miscellaneous Symbols
      $regexMisc = '/[\x{2600}-\x{26FF}]/u';
      $clean_text = preg_replace($regexMisc, '', $clean_text);
  
      // Match Dingbats
      $regexDingbats = '/[\x{2700}-\x{27BF}]/u';
      $clean_text = preg_replace($regexDingbats, '', $clean_text);
  
      return $clean_text;
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and also tried:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$text = preg_replace('/&amp;#x(e[0-9a-f][0-9a-f][0-9a-f]|f[0-8][0-9a-f][0-9a-f])/i', '', $text);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>None of these work, the script I'm using to call all of these is:</p>
  
  <pre><code>  $comments = remove_emoji($comments);
  </code></pre>