This repo contains JSON files containing a list of emojis as based on the Unicode CLDR data and the javascript code that was used to extract and build the JSON files.
I was working on an emoji picker plugin to be implemented via JS but was finding it hard to find a solution that would provide a list of emojis similar to what you'd find on mobile devices and most notably WhatsApp which has (aleast IMO) the best implementation of the unicode emoji standard. This repo has JSON files with the unicodes for the full emoji data listed on unicode.org.
I wrote a simple JS script that can pe pasted in the console of a browser's dev tools when on linked page above. It will extract and group the emojis for you then output a JSON string you can copy to wherever you'd want to. The emoji groupings are at the higher level as defined on this page on emoji ordering from unicode.org.
The simple-emoji-list.json file is supposed to be smaller in size compared to the full-emoji-list.json file.
...
{
"no":1,
"code":"U+1F600",
"flagged": false,
"keywords": ["face", "grin"]
},
...
and
...
{
"no":1,
"code":"U+1F600",
"emoji":"😀",
"description":"GRINNING FACE",
"flagged": false,
"keywords": ["face", "grin"]
},
...
Also, where applicable, the emoji's object will have a type property to account for skin tones as follows
...
{
"no":99,
"code":"U+1F466",
"flagged": false,
"keywords": ["boy"],
"types":[
"U+1F466 U+1F3FF",
"U+1F466 U+1F3FE",
"U+1F466 U+1F3FD",
"U+1F466 U+1F3FC",
"U+1F466 U+1F3FB"
]
},
...
In both json files ignore the no property. I'll probably remove it later. The flagged field indicates that browsers may not support this specific emoji. If you need a filter check this property.
Not sure how long this will be available for but I came across Myjson and I added the content of simple-emoji-list.json. You can access its JSON content via https://api.myjson.com/bins/4sz7d.