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Jorik
Jorik

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Country Code to Flag Emoji

Instead of showing boring country codes like US, CH, NL, it is much nicer to show the flag emojis, πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ πŸ‡¨πŸ‡­ and πŸ‡³πŸ‡±, right? This isn't hard to do with some JavaScript.

function getFlagEmoji(countryCode) {
  const codePoints = countryCode
    .toUpperCase()
    .split('')
    .map(char =>  127397 + char.charCodeAt());
  return String.fromCodePoint(...codePoints);
}
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The flag emoji is a combination of the two unicode region characters, located at unicode position 127462 for the letter A. For CH (Switzerland), we want the indexes to be 127464 and 127469.

Run down of what happens in this little function;

  • First, uppercase the country code input to ensure we're getting the right character position.
  • Split into an array, and iterate over each character.
  • We can receive the UTF-16 code index from the character using charCodeAt. The UTF-16 A is positioned at 65, and we have subtracted this from the region A character index 127462, explaining the hardcoded 127397 value (127462 - 65). To get the correct flag emoji index, we simply add the received index to the offset number.
  • Finally, the String.fromCodePoint function will return the emoji characters for the computed indexes.
getFlagEmoji('US') = πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ
getFlagEmoji('NL') = πŸ‡³πŸ‡±
getFlagEmoji('CH') = πŸ‡¨πŸ‡­
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Instant flags without additional resources!

Top comments (20)

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy πŸŽ–οΈ • Edited

Nice. I'm gonna save a 1-liner Gist for future use:

const getFlagEmoji = countryCode=>String.fromCodePoint(...[...countryCode.toUpperCase()].map(x=>0x1f1a5+x.charCodeAt()))
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jorik profile image
Jorik

Nice compact improvement! Although I would also suggest optimising for readability :-)

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy πŸŽ–οΈ

I did. This one was too much... :P

const getFlag=c=>String.fromCodePoint(...[...c.toUpperCase()].map(x=>0x1f1a5+x.charCodeAt()))
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jorik profile image
Jorik • Edited

You inspired me to optimise the example function in the article to have less redundant code. :-)

An alternative implementation could use the replace method to replace each character.

function getFlagEmoji(countryCode) {
  return countryCode.toUpperCase().replace(/./g, char => 
      String.fromCodePoint(127397 + char.charCodeAt())
  );
}
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jacobmgevans profile image
Jacob Evans

This turned into a CodeWars challenge lol

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alia5 profile image
Peter Repukat

Combined both of them, and I like this best. lol

(c)=>c.replace(/./g,(ch)=>String.fromCodePoint(0x1f1a5+ch.toUpperCase().charCodeAt()))
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link2twenty profile image
Andrew Bone • Edited

One problem with this approach is it leaves you at the mercy of your OS (and even browser).

In this image I'm running the same fiddle on the same OS (windows 10) but in different browsers (the top one is chrome the bottom is firefox).

Compare Chrome and Firefox

That all being said it's a nice way to keep things looking right for the OS. And a great way to keep code light.

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susnux profile image
Ferdinand

Thank you, very nice! I just wanted to share a performance improvement:

function getFlagEmoji(countryCode) {
  return [...countryCode.toUpperCase()].map(char => 
      String.fromCodePoint(127397 + char.charCodeAt())
  ).reduce((a, b) => `${a}${b}`);
}
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From the benchmark your original code is 12% slower and the version in the comments using replace is 14% slower: jsperf benchmark

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mosijava profile image
Mostafa Javaheripour

Something weird has happened and this doesn't work in latest chrome (93) on windows.

it works fine on linux both in chrome and firefox though.

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jorik profile image
Jorik • Edited

For political reasons, Windows doesn't ship with country flag emojis. It however returns the country code, so that should be a fair alternative.

answers.microsoft.com/en-us/window...

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niightly profile image
Thiago

great code, but somehow it does not work on UK

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rebeccatuffnell profile image
Rebecca Tuffnell • Edited

It's GB (Great Britain) for the UK

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astagi profile image
Andrea Stagi

Great article! I love emojis some time ago and I made a Python module to get flags github.com/lotrekagency/emojiflag

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mojtabazolfaghari profile image
mojtaba zolfaghari

it is not working on chrome

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amr3k profile image
Amr • Edited

It works for me!
Just tested it with Firefox, Chrome and Edge, using Archlinux and having Google Noto as default system font

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mojtabazolfaghari profile image
mojtaba zolfaghari

it is not working on google chrome just shows the flag code

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nirazanbasnet profile image
⚑ Nirazan Basnet ⚑

Nice

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asissuthar profile image
Ashish Suthar

Using kotlin on Android
gist.github.com/asissuthar/cf8fcf0...

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muhammed_mamidi_ba90b5e92 profile image
Muhammed Mamidi

Please your Flag kurdistan

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mohamma35066861 profile image
Mohammad Noushad Siddiqi

I'm facing the issue in Bing browser and Google chrome, it's only showing country code instead of it's emoji.