Rofi emoji picker

rofi-emoji.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#
#   Use rofi to pick emoji because that's what this
#   century is about apparently...
#
#   Requirements:
#     rofi, xsel, xdotool, curl, xmllint
#
#   Usage:
#     1. Download all emoji
#        $ rofi-emoji --download
#
#     2. Run it!
#        $ rofi-emoji
#
#   Notes:
#     * You'll need a emoji font like "Noto Emoji" or "EmojiOne".
#     * Confirming an item will automatically paste it WITHOUT
#       writing it to your clipboard.
#     * Ctrl+C will copy it to your clipboard WITHOUT pasting it.
#

# Where to save the emojis file.
EMOJI_FILE="$HOME/.cache/emojis.txt"

# Urls of emoji to download.
# You can remove what you don't need.
URLS=(
    'https://emojipedia.org/people/'
    'https://emojipedia.org/nature/'
    'https://emojipedia.org/food-drink/'
    'https://emojipedia.org/activity/'
    'https://emojipedia.org/travel-places/'
    'https://emojipedia.org/objects/'
    'https://emojipedia.org/symbols/'
    'https://emojipedia.org/flags/'
)


function notify() {
    if [ "$(command -v notify-send)" ]; then
        notify-send "$1" "$2"
    fi
}


function download() {
    notify `basename "$0"` 'Downloading all emoji for your pleasure'

    echo "" > "$EMOJI_FILE"

    for url in "${URLS[@]}"; do
        echo "Downloading: $url"

        # Download the list of emoji and remove all the junk around it
        emojis=$(curl -s "$url" | \
                 xmllint --html \
                         --xpath '//ul[@class="emoji-list css_test1"]' - 2>/dev/null)

        # Get rid of starting/closing ul tags
        emojis=$(echo "$emojis" | head -n -1 | tail -n +1)

        # Extract the emoji and its description
        emojis=$(echo "$emojis" | \
                 sed -rn 's/.*<span class="emoji">(.*)<\/span> (.*)<\/a><\/li>/\1 \2/p')

        echo "$emojis" >> "$EMOJI_FILE"
    done

    notify `basename "$0"` "We're all set!"
}


function display() {
    emoji=$(cat "$EMOJI_FILE" | grep -v '#' | grep -v '^[[:space:]]*$')
    line=$(echo "$emoji" | rofi -dmenu -i -p emoji -kb-custom-1 Ctrl+c $@)
    exit_code=$?

    line=($line)

    if [ $exit_code == 0 ]; then
        sleep 0.1  # Delay pasting so the text-entry can come active
        xdotool type --clearmodifiers "${line[0]}"
    elif [ $exit_code == 10 ]; then
        echo -n "${line[0]}" | xsel -i -b
    fi
}


# Some simple argparsing
if [[ "$1" =~ -D|--download ]]; then
    download
    exit 0
elif [[ "$1" =~ -h|--help ]]; then
    echo "usage: $0 [-D|--download]"
    exit 0
fi

# Download all emoji if they don't exist yet
if [ ! -f "$EMOJI_FILE" ]; then
    download
fi

# display displays :)
display

Just encountered this same problem & delighted to see it also fixed here :) This XPath might be more robust to future markup changes: //ul[contains(@class,"emoji-list")]

This project is a crime and I love it.

Wrote this patch to download the list from the official unicode website instead of emojipedia. This only requires one download, should have a more stable format over time and cuts out the xmllint dependency + most of the parsing code.
https://gist.github.com/omc8db/d95462784bc1c5c41f7f489df5dbc377

Here is a fork of @omc8db's fork that works with wayland, fixes an error with recent versions of rofi that prevents it from launching because ctrl+c is already bound by rofi, and fixes shellcheck warnings. https://gist.github.com/mmirus/840c907f02dfb491a150be4e459893d1