I have successfully been able to retrieve any bible verse that is place between brackets like (John 3:16) but I have been looking for a way in php to retrieve any bible verse in any string into an array per bible verse. None of the search result I have found on stack overflow matches what I want. Let's say I have a content like this :

Here is a content where Genèse 11:10-12, 15-17, 19-20. And other verses scattered anywhere in the content like 2 Chronicles 12:10-12, 15-17, 19-20 and 3 John 3 and soemthing else.

How can I retrieve any of these Bible verses into an array so that this array will contain the following e respective of the Genèse accent è ?

array("Genèse 11:10-12, 15-17, 19-20", "2 Chronicles 12:10-12, 15-17, 19-20", "3 John 3");

How to retrieve any existing Bible verse including accentuated bible books from any content into an array ?

CodePudding user response：

We can use preg_match_all with an appropriate regex pattern:

$input = "Here is a content where Genèse 11:10-12, 15-17, 19-20. And other verses scattered anywhere in the content like 2 Chronicles 12:10-12, 15-17, 19-20 and 3 John 3 and soemthing else.";
preg_match_all("/(?:\d  )?[A-Z]\S  \d (?::\d (?:-\d )?(?:, \d (?:-\d )?)*)?/", $input, $matches);
print_r($matches[0]);

This prints:

Array
(
    [0] => Genèse 11:10-12, 15-17, 19-20
    [1] => 2 Chronicles 12:10-12, 15-17, 19-20
    [2] => 3 John 3
)

Here is an explanation of the regex pattern:

• (?:\d )? match optional book number (e.g. 1 Kings, 2 Chronicles)
• [A-Z]\S match book name (includes possible accented characters)
• space
• \d match chapter number
• (?: start optional group
• : match colon
• \d (?:-\d )? match verse number followed by optional range
• (?:, \d (?:-\d )?)* match zero or more verse ranges
• )? close optional group