Text to Emoji Translation Textarea PHP Sort Tutorial

Text to Emoji Translation Textarea PHP Sort Tutorial

You can definitely benefit, as a programmer, with a sceptical outlook. The way we developed the recent Text to Emoji Translation Textarea Tutorial‘s web application was a case in point. It felt too simplistic by half, and so it panned out to be. But here again, revisits help. Trying things out, and honestly trying to break it. This “trying to break it” started out with us trying “face” and “smile” and combinations to no avail. No emoji description is that simple. But then we tried …


smile, Grinning Face with Sweat


… and that’s where we discovered the source of our unease. Before the fix it “Emoji-ized” this to …


smile, 😀 with Sweat


… whereas it would have been better to have “Emoji-ized” that to …


smile, 😅


So, where to fix this? It’s the PHP helper responsible. Could it be as simple as presenting the ~[Emoji]|[Text] array pairings in an order whereby the longer [Text] lengths appear first? So far, with our testing, it appears … “Yup”.

And so we involve PHP’s sort function, in context, in the changed PHP code below …


$ diff fillin_gaps_with_emojis.php-GETME fillin_gaps_with_emojis.php_GETME
31,44d30
< $emarrpre=explode($ea, $objphp);
< $objphp=$ea;
< $emarr=[];
< $emarrlens=[];
< for ($ib=0; $ib<sizeof($emarrpre); $ib++) {
< array_push($emarrlens, ('' . (99 - strlen($emarrpre[$ib]))) . $emarrpre[$ib]);
< }
< sort($emarrlens);
< for ($ib=0; $ib<sizeof($emarrlens); $ib++) {
< $objphp.=substr($emarrlens[$ib], 2) . '~'; //array_push($emarr, substr($emarrlens[$ib], 2));
< }
< $emarr=explode($endspan, $objphp);
< } else {
< $emarr=explode($endspan, $objphp);
45a32
> $emarr=explode($endspan, $objphp);


Have you noticed other types of “sort” functions in PHP? Why not use those? Well, when possible, we like to work with the “no frills” versions of language choices, rather than the obverse idea of “making the code less verbose”. We like to fit in with “what has always been there” we’d guess you’d say. And so that is where that codeline …


array_push($emarrlens, ('' . (99 - strlen($emarrpre[$ib]))) . $emarrpre[$ib]);


… is turning a “numeric sorting concept” (the length of [Text]) into a set length character result (us hoping no [Text] is longer than 89).

No change to the parent HTML/Javascript code here for the changed PHP helper fillin_gaps_with_emojis.php ready for you to (re-)try at this live run link.

Previous relevant Text to Emoji Translation Textarea Tutorial is shown below.

Text to Emoji Translation Textarea Tutorial

Within the design of the web application behind yesterday’s Text to Emoji Translation Primer Tutorial it would have grated with many web purists that …

• the data being textual (emojis are text) …
• we entered “data” into a “textarea” element … no complaints … very suitable … but …
• we translated into an “iframe” element … huh?!

Yes, this is not the best approach, we concur. And yet, it is not all bad. Let’s tabularize what we mean here (including macOS two finger gesture or Windows right click menu functionality possibilities), below …

And so, we allow for the old “Iframe” element approach to still be accessed, but turn the default workflow into a design whereby “Emoji-ize” textual results end up in a “Textarea” element for a changed parent HTML/Javascript fillin_gaps_with_emojis.html ready for you to (re-)try at this live run link.

Previous relevant Text to Emoji Translation Primer Tutorial is shown below.

Text to Emoji Translation Primer Tutorial

We’re starting a new coding project, today, calling on the genius of Emojipedia for an …


Emoji-ize Text


… mangling of English … as well as an interesting substitutional feeling web tool.

Admittedly we started the day wondering about that “bluetooth icon” Spotify tutorial of recent times, wondering about how we could have improved the presentation via …

• delayed iPhone photo technique … yes, but what if there was …
• an emoji for that Bluetooth icon look a lot of us know by now

… and looking into that second idea was surprised that the Bluetooth icon, let alone emojis for concepts like WiFi or “Power On” (ie. concepts, by and large, we guess) will either never become emojis or will be slow to get to becoming an emoji. More, emojis suit our real object nouns in our languages, and so we wanted to write a substitutional web application to see whether my theorizing carries any weight.

The user enters into a textarea element their text of interest, then they click/touch a button, and this HTML/Javascript fillin_gaps_with_emojis.html parent asks of the called PHP fillin_gaps_with_emojis.php

Simple idea you might be interested in trying, in a new window, or below …

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