Clean Emoji using PHP. Making this call from ColdFusion can be seen here https://gist.github.com/GiancarloGomez/0e76348c89df8f3b72fddfe7843cbceb The PHP snippet was taken from here https://www.drupal.org/node/2043439 (http://www.giancarlogomez.com/2016/09/emoji-support-with-coldfusion-and-mysql.html)

clean_emoji.php

<?php
function removeEmoji($text) {

    $clean_text = "";

    // Match Emoticons
    $regexEmoticons = '/[\x{1F600}-\x{1F64F}]/u';
    $clean_text = preg_replace($regexEmoticons, '', $text);

    // Match Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs
    $regexSymbols = '/[\x{1F300}-\x{1F5FF}]/u';
    $clean_text = preg_replace($regexSymbols, '', $clean_text);

    // Match Transport And Map Symbols
    $regexTransport = '/[\x{1F680}-\x{1F6FF}]/u';
    $clean_text = preg_replace($regexTransport, '', $clean_text);

    return $clean_text;
}

echo isset($_POST['value']) ? removeEmoji($_POST['value']) : '';