PHP json_encode() Emoji icons and letters as an array key value

Question

I have an array which has Emoji icons and text strings as the key value, similar to below:

$a=array(
   "🙌 hi no 1"=> "🙌 🙌 this is a test",
   "🙌 hi no 1"=> "🙌 🙌 this is a test",
   "🙌 hi no 1"=> "🙌 🙌 this is a test",
   "🙌 hi no 1"=> "🙌 🙌 this is a test",
    "🌟 no 3" => array("this is a test","🎊 test"),
    "🌟 no 3" => array("this is a test","🎊 test"),
    "🌟 no 3" => array("this is a test","🎊 test"),
    "🌟 no 3" => array("this is a test","🎊 test"),
    "🌟 no 3" => array("this is a test","🎊 test"),
);

The problem is that file_put_contents($filepath,json_encode($a)); saves an empty array into the database. Would you suggest a solution?

Answer 1

You could try

file_put_contents($filepath,json_encode($a, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE));

And see if that works, since emoji are unicode I would think that would solve it.