PHP Unicode

Introduction

Streamline Unicode strings, code points and grapheme clusters manipulations. Object oriented implementation.

The library provides two levels of abstraction:

• Code point level (CodePoint, UnicodeString) — works with individual Unicode code points. Requires ext-mbstring.
• Grapheme level (Grapheme, GraphemeString) — works with user-perceived characters (grapheme clusters). Requires ext-intl.

Requirements

Class	Required Extensions
CodePoint	ext-mbstring
UnicodeString	ext-mbstring
Grapheme	ext-mbstring, ext-intl
GraphemeString	ext-mbstring, ext-intl

PHP 8.1 or higher is required.

Installation

Pull in the package through Composer.

composer require cybercog/php-unicode

For grapheme cluster support, install the intl PHP extension.

Usage

Code Point

$codePoint = \Cog\Unicode\CodePoint::of('ÿ');

$codePoint = \Cog\Unicode\CodePoint::ofDecimal(255);

$codePoint = \Cog\Unicode\CodePoint::ofHexadecimal('U+00FF');

$codePoint = \Cog\Unicode\CodePoint::ofHtmlEntity('ÿ');

$codePoint = \Cog\Unicode\CodePoint::ofXmlEntity('ÿ');

Represent Code Point in any format

$codePoint = \Cog\Unicode\CodePoint::of('ÿ');

echo strval($codePoint); // (string) "ÿ"

echo $codePoint->toDecimal(); // (int) 255

echo $codePoint->toHexadecimal(); // (string) "U+00FF"

echo $codePoint->toHtmlEntity(); // (string) "ÿ"

echo $codePoint->toXmlEntity(); // (string) "ÿ"

Unicode String (code point level)

$string = \Cog\Unicode\UnicodeString::of('Hello');

UnicodeString object will contain a list of code points.

For example, the Unicode string "Hello" is represented by the code points:

• U+0048 (H)
• U+0065 (e)
• U+006C (l)
• U+006C (l)
• U+006F (o)

echo strval($string); // (string) "Hello"

$codePointList = $string->codePointList; // list<CodePoint>

Grapheme (grapheme cluster level)

Requires ext-intl.

$grapheme = \Cog\Unicode\Grapheme::of('👨‍👩‍👧‍👦');

echo strval($grapheme); // (string) "👨‍👩‍👧‍👦"

$codePointList = $grapheme->codePointList; // list<CodePoint>

Grapheme String (grapheme cluster level)

Requires ext-intl.

$string = \Cog\Unicode\GraphemeString::of('Ае👨‍👩‍👧‍👦');

$graphemeList = $string->graphemeList; // list<Grapheme>
// 'А', 'е', '👨‍👩‍👧‍👦' — 3 graphemes (not 9 code points)

echo strval($string); // (string) "Ае👨‍👩‍👧‍👦"

Real-world examples

Convert a character to all supported formats

$codePoint = \Cog\Unicode\CodePoint::of('©');

echo $codePoint->toDecimal();     // 169
echo $codePoint->toHexadecimal(); // "U+00A9"
echo $codePoint->toHtmlEntity();  // "©"
echo $codePoint->toXmlEntity();   // "©"

Round-trip between entity formats

$cp = \Cog\Unicode\CodePoint::ofHtmlEntity('♥');

echo $cp->toXmlEntity(); // "♥"
echo $cp->toDecimal();   // 9829

$cp2 = \Cog\Unicode\CodePoint::ofDecimal($cp->toDecimal());
echo strval($cp2); // "♥"

Inspect code points in a string

$string = \Cog\Unicode\UnicodeString::of('café');

foreach ($string->codePointList as $cp) {
    echo $cp->toHexadecimal() . ' ';
}
// U+0063 U+0061 U+0066 U+00E9

Code points vs. graphemes — why it matters

// Flag emoji: 2 code points, but 1 visible character
$flag = \Cog\Unicode\UnicodeString::of('🇦🇶');
echo count($flag->codePointList); // 2

$flag = \Cog\Unicode\GraphemeString::of('🇦🇶');
echo count($flag->graphemeList); // 1

// Family emoji: 7 code points (persons + ZWJ), 1 visible character
$family = \Cog\Unicode\GraphemeString::of('👨‍👩‍👧‍👦');
echo count($family->graphemeList); // 1

$familyGrapheme = $family->graphemeList[0];
echo count($familyGrapheme->codePointList); // 7

Detect combining marks

$acute = \Cog\Unicode\CodePoint::of("\u{0301}"); // combining acute accent
echo $acute->isCombining(); // true

$a = \Cog\Unicode\CodePoint::of('A');
echo $a->isCombining(); // false

Why this library?

PHP provides mb_* and grapheme_* functions, but they are procedural and return raw strings. This library wraps them in immutable, type-safe value objects with two key benefits:

• Two levels of abstraction. CodePoint / UnicodeString work with individual Unicode code points. Grapheme / GraphemeString work with user-perceived characters (grapheme clusters). Choose the right level for your use case instead of mixing mb_strlen and grapheme_strlen calls.
• Format conversion. CodePoint converts between character, decimal, hexadecimal (U+XXXX), HTML entity, and XML entity formats in a single object. No need to chain mb_ord, dechex, htmlentities manually.

// Procedural
$char = '©';
$dec = mb_ord($char);
$hex = 'U+' . strtoupper(sprintf('%04X', $dec));
$html = htmlentities($char, ENT_HTML5 | ENT_QUOTES);

// With this library
$cp = \Cog\Unicode\CodePoint::of('©');
$dec = $cp->toDecimal();
$hex = $cp->toHexadecimal();
$html = $cp->toHtmlEntity();

License

• PHP Unicode package is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license by Anton Komarev.

About CyberCog

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