How to send Emoji with Telegram Bot API?

Question

I need to send messages containing emoji with my Telegram Bot.

So I copy/paste emoji code :nine: for example, in my message text and send it to a user, BUT emoji didn`t work.

This is my sample code and function:

function tel_send($key, $t, $c)
{
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "https://api.telegram.org/bot" . $key . "/sendMessage");
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "cache=" . (time() / rand(1, time() - 100)) . "&text=" . $t . "&chat_id=" . $c);
    $ss = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
    return $ss;
}
tel_send($key, "My number - :nine:", $val['message']['chat']['id']);

So, my question is: How can I send emoji by Telegram bot?

Answer 1

I faced the same issue a few days ago.. The solution is to use Bytes (UTF-8) notation from this table: http://apps.timwhitlock.info/emoji/tables/unicode

examples:

😁 \xF0\x9F\x98\x81 GRINNING FACE WITH SMILING EYES

😉 \xF0\x9F\x98\x89 WINKING FACE

Answer 2

you need to specify emoji's unicode value.

check here

these are returned by a function as emoji value like u'\U000026C4' which is snowman. although it is in python, you can apply it for php.