Emoji on MySQL and PHP: why some symbol yes other not?

Question

After reading all the topics about emoji on SO I'm bounded to ask for some help. Question seems to be almost the same: I got an iPhone App sending via PHP emoji to MySQL DB, I can see some symbol on records, as example "umbrella" and "cloud" but other not (angry face, smiling face, and other).

Why some yes and other not?

• MySQL Collation: utf8mb_unicode_ci
• Table collation: utf8mb_unicode_ci
• Field, varchar, collation: utf8mb_unicode_ci

PHP setup:

    mysql_query("SET CHARACTER SET utf8mb4");
    mysql_query("SET NAMES utf8mb4");

The symbols not showed inside the record are shown as question mark "?"

Answer 1

Some emoji are encoded using 3 bytes. If your computers supports emoji, here are the 3 byte emoji:

☺❤✨❕❔✊✌✋☝☀☔☁⛄⚡☎➿✂⚽⚾⛳♠♥♣♦〽☕⛪⛺⛲⛵✈⛽⚠♨1⃣2⃣3⃣4⃣5⃣6⃣7⃣8⃣9⃣0⃣#⃣⬆⬇⬅➡↗↖↘↙◀▶⏪⏩♿㊙㊗✳✴♈♉♊♋♌♍♎♏♐♑♒♓⛎⭕❌©®™

The rest are encoded using 4 bytes and will not work unless you update mysql to utf8mb4. It sounds like you did not fully upgrade to utf8mb4 in some way.