String Manipulation

[Petsmacker]

I'm trying to make a place where users can post news for all to read.
What I want to do is to make it so they could write it like

[quote][username1]My news here[/username1]

[username2]My news is also here[/username2][/quote]

When the script is to be executed onto a page I want it to look something like this. I'm guessing there'll have to be a 'while(' bit on it

[code]<table width=100% cellpadding="3"><tr>
<?$newsinfoque2=mysql_query("SELECT news FROM news WHERE id='$newsid'");
$newsnews2=mysql_result($newsinfoque2,0,"news");
// Working out here
?>
<td width=18%><center><font class="largest"><b><? echo "$usernamehere";?> -</b></font></center></td>
<td width=82%><center><font color="black"><b><? echo nl2br($theirnewshere);?></b></font></center></td>
</tr>
</table>[/code]

What I want to know is how can I make the text between the ['s and ]'s into a variable as a username and then the text between the [username][/username] tags into another variable as news? I hope its not too difficult a question.

[Orio]

[code]<?php
//$text holds the data.

preg_match_all("/\[(.*?)\](.*?)\[\/.*?\]/is", $text, $matches);

$i=0;
while ($i < count($matches[0]))
{
$usernamehere = $matches[1][$i];
$theirnewshere = $matches[2][$i];
?>
<td width=18%><center><font class="largest"><b><? echo "$usernamehere";?> -</b></font></center></td>
<td width=82%><center><font color="black"><b><? echo nl2br($theirnewshere);?></b></font></center></td>
<?php
$i++;
}
?>[/code]

Orio.

PS- Nice avatar :p

[Petsmacker]

Heh, thanks, it works perfectly. I knew it required a preg_ thingy but I haven't yet got my head around those - really should one of these days.

Yup, we have excellent taste in avatars it seems.

Thanks again!