Parse data into array - php

Question

I'm creating a "quote database" for a TV show I'm a fan of, and I'm rewriting parts of it I don't particularly like. I came across my function to parse the data holding the quote and characters into an array that I can easily loop through and display. One of the features of the site is that you can have a single quote (one-liner) or a conversation between several characters. Right now I'm storing single quotes like this:
[charactername]This is my witty one-liner.
And conversations follow the same pattern:
[characternameone]How's the weather?
[characternametwo]Pretty good, actually.
And so on. Here's the aforementioned parsing function:
function parse_quote($text)
{
// Determine if it's a single or convo
if ( strpos($text, "\n") != false )
{
// Convo
// Let's explode into the separate characters/lines
$text = explode("\n", $text);
$convo = array();
// Parse each line into character and line
foreach ( $text as $part )
{
$character = substr($part, 1, strpos($part, ']') - 1);
$line = substr($part, strlen($character) + 2);
$convo[] = array(
'character' => $character,
'line' => $line
);
}
return array(
'type' => 'convo',
'quote' => $convo
);
}
else
{
// Single
// Parse line into character and line
return array(
'type' => 'single',
'quote' => array(
'character' => substr($text, 1, strpos($text, ']') - 1),
'line' => substr($text, strlen(substr($text, 1, strpos($text, ']') - 1)) + 2)
)
);
}
}
It works as expected, but I can't help but think there's a better way to do this. I'm horrible with regular expressions, which I assume would come in at least somewhat handy in this situation. Any advice, or improvements?

Answer 1

Personally, I would change your data storage method. It would be much easier to deal with a serialized or JSON encoded string.
Instead of
[characternameone]How's the weather?
[characternametwo]Pretty good, actually.
you would have
array(
[0] => {
'name' => "characternameone",
'quote' => "How's the weather?"
},
[1] => {
'name' => "characternametwo",
'quote' => "Pretty good, actually"
}
)
Then when you read it out, there isn't any parsing.
function display_quote($input)
{
for ($i=0, $n=count($input); $i<$n; $i++) {
$quote = $input[$i];
if ( $i > 0 ) echo "\n";
echo $quote['name'] . ': ' . $quote['quote'];
}
}

Answer 2

Instead of
$character = substr($part, 1, strpos($part, ']') - 1);
$line = substr($part, strlen($character) + 2);
$convo[] = array(
'character' => $character,
'line' => $line
);
you could try
preg_match('#\[([^\]]+)\](.*)#ism', $part, $match);
$convo[] = array(
'character' => $match[1],
'line' => $match[2]
);
HTH