PHP Unicode codepoint to character - php

Question

I would like to convert Unicode codepoint to character. Here is what I have tried:
$point = dechex(127468); // 1f1ec
echo "\u{1f1ec}"; // this works
echo "\u{$point}"; // this outputs '\u1f1ec'
echo "\u{{$point}}"; // Parse error: Invalid UTF-8 codepoint escape sequence
echo "\u\{{$point}\}"; // outputs \u\{1f1ec\}
echo "\u{". $point ."}"; // Parse error; same as above

Answer 1

You don't need to convert integer to hexadecimal string, instead use IntlChar::chr:
echo IntlChar::chr(127468);
Directly from docs of IntlChar::chr:
Return Unicode character by code point value

Answer 2

A similar problem occurs when you want to get a floating point number, say, 12e-4, concatenating pieces. The parsing is done too early in the compiler to allow it. You probably can, however, use eval() to do so. Yuck.

Answer 3

Actually find the solution after several hours:
$unicode = '1F605'; //😅
$uni = '{' . $unicode; // First bracket needs to be separated, otherwise you get '\u1F605'
$str = "\u$uni}";
eval("\$str = \"$str\";"); // Turns unicode into RegEx and store it as $str
echo $str;
Thanks #Rick James for the idea with the eval() function

Answer 4

PHP 7+ solution snippet:
function charFromCodePoint($codepoint) {
eval('$ch = "\u{'.dechex($codepoint).'}";');
return $ch;
}
Notice, that PHP5 doesn't support the "\u{}" syntax.