Number of emojis in a String?

Question

With recently added iOS 9.1 emojis, and the availability of skin tones etc, how do you properly count the number of Emojis in a String, assuming the string is uniquely made out of emojis?

Keep in mind that the length of emojis can vary.

NSString.length or string.characters.count

"😀" returns 2
"✊🏿" returns 4
"🇧🇸" or "🇧🇸" or "🇧🇸🇧🇸🇧🇸🇧🇸🇧🇸🇧🇸" returns 1!
"👨‍👩‍👧‍👧" returns 4 (Should be normally displayed as 1 family emoji)
etc...

Answer 1

I make an extension of String to count number of emoji in a string:

extension String {
    func countEmojiCharacter() -> Int {

        func isEmoji(s:NSString) -> Bool {

            let high:Int = Int(s.characterAtIndex(0))
            if 0xD800 <= high && high <= 0xDBFF {
                let low:Int = Int(s.characterAtIndex(1))
                let codepoint: Int = ((high - 0xD800) * 0x400) + (low - 0xDC00) + 0x10000
                return (0x1D000 <= codepoint && codepoint <= 0x1F9FF)
            }
            else {
                return (0x2100 <= high && high <= 0x27BF)
            }
        }

        let nsString = self as NSString
        var length = 0

        nsString.enumerateSubstringsInRange(NSMakeRange(0, nsString.length), options: NSStringEnumerationOptions.ByComposedCharacterSequences) { (subString, substringRange, enclosingRange, stop) -> Void in

            if isEmoji(subString!) {
                length++
            }
        }

        return length
    }
}

Test:

let y = "xxx😒🇨🇰🇨🇰zzz"

print(y.countEmojiCharacter())
// result is 3

Answer 2

try this code snippet

extension String {
    var composedCount : Int {
        var count = 0
        enumerateSubstringsInRange(startIndex..<endIndex, options: .ByComposedCharacterSequences) {_ in count++}
        return count
    }
}

: credit goes to ericasadun