How to use unicode in Android resource?

by

Your character (U+1F4E1) is outside of Unicode BMP (Basic Multilingual Plane – range from U+0000 to U+FFFF).

Unfortunately, Android has very weak (if any) support for non-BMP characters. UTF-8 representation for non-BMP characters requires 4 bytes (0xF0 0x9F 0x93 0xA1). But, Android UTF-8 parser only understands 3 bytes maximum (see it here and here).

It works for you when you use UTF-16 surrogate form representation of this character: "\uD83D\uDCE1". If you were able to encode each surrogate UTF-16 character in modified UTF-8 (aka CESU-8) – it would take 6 bytes total (3 bytes in UTF-8 for each member of surrogate pair), then it would be possible. But, Android does not support CESU-8 explicitly either.

So, your current solution – hard-coding this symbol in source code as surrogate UTF-16 pair seems easiest, at least until Android starts fully supporting non-BMP UTF-8.

UPDATE: this seems to be partially fixed in Android 6.0. This commit has been merged into Android 6, and permits presence of 4-byte UTF-8 characters in XML resources. Its not perfect solution – it will simply automatically convert 4-byte UTF-8 into appropriate surrogate pair. However, it allows to move them from your source code into XML resources. Unfortunately, you can’t use this solution until your application can stop supporting any Android version except for 6.0 and later.

More Related Contents:

  1. How to set emoji by unicode in a textview?
  2. Android Studio : unmappable character for encoding UTF-8
  3. Display all Unicode chars in TextView
  4. Post UTF-8 encoded data to server loses certain characters
  5. Android WebView UTF-8 not showing
  6. Passing data between a fragment and its container activity
  7. Best way to convert text files between character sets?
  8. Automatically accept all SDK licences
  9. Using Alarmmanager to start a service at specific time
  10. How to set background color of a View
  11. Google Play Services Library update and missing symbol @integer/google_play_services_version
  12. How to enable logging for apache commons HttpClient on Android
  13. How to get access to raw resources that I put in res folder?
  14. Making data persistent in android
  15. Google Maps API v2: How to make markers clickable?
  16. How to implement cookie handling on Android using OkHttp?
  17. Android SDK 22 – SearchView rendering problems
  18. Using NanoHTTPD in Android
  19. Is proguard.cfg needed for library projects?
  20. How can I tell if the screen is on in android?
  21. Getting started with Open NFC emulator
  22. Why is onKey() called twice?
  23. Passing touch events to the parent view
  24. Play Youtube HTML5 embedded Video in Android WebView
  25. Passing a List to another Activity in Android
  26. How do I change the tint of an ImageButton on focus/press
  27. Go to settings screen
  28. Hide Year field in Android DatePicker?
  29. How to override the enter activity animation if it is stated by launcher
  30. Android : Draw Circle With Text Inside

Leave a Comment