Square symbols in parsed text from Twitter

Question

I apologize for such a topic title. But it is because the problem is so.

Now I'm writing parser for Twitter and when in the text of tweet script stumbles upon these symbols 💗⚫️, Yii generate errors as:

SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1366 Incorrect string value: '\xF0\x9F\x98\x8D\xF0\x9F...' for column 'code' at row 1.

I wrote the following code:

if (preg_match('/😍/si', $texts[$i])) {
 $texts[$i] = str_replace('😍', '', $texts[$i]); 
}

But it did not help me, because all these characters have different Unicode (they are only in the form of squares)...

I wrote the following code too:

        if (preg_match('/xF0/si', $texts[$i])) {
            unset($texts[$i]);
        }

But it did not help me too...

These symbols is: ✂ ✃ ✄ ✆ ✇ ✈ ✉ ✌ ✍ ✎ ✏ ✐ ✑ ✒ ✓ ✔ ✕ ✖ ✗ ✘ ✙ ✚ ✛ ✜ ✝ ✞ ✟ ✠ ✡ ✢ ✣ ✤ ✥ ✦ ✧ ✩ ✪ ✫ ✬ ✭ ✮ ✯ ✰ ✱ ✲ ✳ ✴ ✵ ✶ ✷ ✸ ✹ ✺ ✻ ✼ ✽ ✾ ✿ ❀ ❁ ❂ ❃ ❄ ❅ ❆ ❇ ❈ ❉ ❊ ❋ ❍ ❏ ❐ ❑ ❒ ❖ ❘ ❙ ❚ ❛ ❜ ❝ ❞ ❡ ❢ ❣ ❤ ❥ ❦ ❧ ❶ ❷ ❸ ❹ ❺ ❻ ❼ ❽ ❾ ❿ ➀ ➁ ➂ ➃ ➄ ➅ ➆ 7 ➇ ➈ ➉ ➊ ➋ ➌ ➍ ➎ ➏ ➐ ➑ ➒ ➓ ➔ ➘ ➙ ➚ ➛ ➜ ➝ ➞ ➟ ➠ ➡ ➢ ➣ ➤ ➥ ➦ ➧ ➨ ➩ ➪ ➫ ➬ ➭ ➮ ➯ ➱ ➲ ➳ ➴ ➵ ➶ ➷ ➸ ➹ ➺ ➻ ➼ ➽ and many many others...

How I can remove all these symbols from parsed text (without using utf8mb4)?

Answer 1

You're oh so close. Combining your code with Marc B's comments, we have this:

if (preg_match('/\xF0/si', $texts[$i])) {
  $texts[$i] = preg_replace('/\xF0/si', '', $texts[$i]); 
}

Answer 2

function replace4byte($string) {
    return preg_replace('%(?:
          \xF0[\x90-\xBF][\x80-\xBF]{2}      # planes 1-3
        | [\xF1-\xF3][\x80-\xBF]{3}          # planes 4-15
        | \xF4[\x80-\x8F][\x80-\xBF]{2}      # plane 16
    )%xs', '', $string);    
}