# The String codePointAt() method

> Learn how the JavaScript codePointAt() method returns the full Unicode code point of a character, handling symbols that need two 16-bit units in one call.

Author: [Flavio Copes](https://flaviocopes.com/about/) | Published: 2019-02-16 | Topics: [JavaScript](https://flaviocopes.com/tags/js/) | Canonical: https://flaviocopes.com/javascript-string-codepointat/

This was introduced in ES2015 to handle Unicode characters that cannot be represented by a single 16-bit Unicode unit, but need 2 instead.

Using `charCodeAt()` you need to retrieve the first, and the second, and combine them. Using `codePointAt()` you get the whole character in one call.

For example, this chinese character "𠮷" is composed by 2 UTF-16 (Unicode) parts:

```js
"𠮷".charCodeAt(0).toString(16) //d842
"𠮷".charCodeAt(1).toString(16) //dfb7
```

If you create a new character by combining those unicode characters:

```js
"\ud842\udfb7" //"𠮷"
```

You can get the same result usign `codePointAt()`:

```js
"𠮷".codePointAt(0) //20bb7
```

If you create a new character by combining those unicode characters:

```js
"\u{20bb7}" //"𠮷"
```

More on Unicode and working with it in [Unicode and UTF-8](https://flaviocopes.com/javascript-unicode/).