Where "character viewer" data is stored? - macos

Question

I need to parse all data from Character Viewer on Mac, how can I do it? Or where is it stored?
I need this format:
☀︎
BLACK SUN WITH RAYS
Unicode: U+2600 U+FE0E, UTF-8: E2 98 80 EF B8 8E
☼
WHITE SUN WITH RAYS
Unicode: U+263C, UTF-8: E2 98 BC
and so on.
Thanks!

Answer 1

In OS X El Capitan (Version 10.11.6), the "Character Viewer" data can be found inside the package of the "Character Palette" system application located at /System/Library/Input Methods/CharacterPalette.app, in the SQLite database file: /System/Library/Input Methods/CharacterPalette.app/Contents/Resources/CharacterDB.sqlite3.
You can use an appropriate application (such as DB Browser for SQLite) to open the database file and export its main table to a file in CSV format, then extract the data by yourself.
In JavaScript (Node.js), provided you already know how to read the file lines, that would be something like:
let lines =
[
"☼ WHITE SUN WITH RAYS|||||||||||||||",
"☀︎ BLACK SUN WITH RAYS|||||||||||||||",
"☀️ BLACK SUN WITH RAYS|||||||||||||||",
"☀ BLACK SUN WITH RAYS|||||||||||||||"
];
for (let line of lines)
{
let fields = line.split ('\t');
let characterSequence = fields[0];
let name = fields[1].split ('|')[0];
let codePoints = Array.from (characterSequence).map (char => "U+" + char.codePointAt (0).toString (16).toUpperCase ().padStart (4, "0")).join (" ");
console.log (characterSequence, name, "Unicode:", codePoints);
}
Notes:
The name of the main table (unihan_dict) is somehow misleading, but it contains data for all non-Unihan characters as well, with minimal information though.
The Unicode character codes are not stored in the database file, since this would be redundant, but they can be easily computed.