Is this possible with PHP? If so, how?

Hello, I would like to start by pointing out my PHP skills are limited, so I ask that any help you offer is noob-friendly

On my forum, a PS3 forum, I would like to display their trophy cards automatically from PS3Trophycard.com

Here's the URL's used by PS3Trophycard.com for reference:

http://card.mmos.com/psn/profile/pa/r/parker-94/card.png

I'm using phpBB to run my forum software, and have a custom field for determining their PSN ID, so usually replacing the "parker-94" part in the above URL with {postrow.POSTER_FROM}, which would automatically create the URLs.

However, my issue is with the pa/r part of the URL. I need a code or script which reads the user's PSN ID, and takes the first two letters into one part, and then reads the third letter for the next bit, like so:

http://card.mmos.com/psn/profile/[FIRST TWO LETTERS]/[THIRD LETTER]/[FULL PSN ID]/card.png

I was wondering how I would go about doing so? Basically, I need PHP to read the first 2 letters of something, and then the third letter.

Thanks in advance.

 

The fastest way is to treat your PSN ID string as an array and get your URL like this:

$psnID = "parker-94";
$url = "http://card.mmos.com/psn/profile/{$psnID[0]}{$psnID[1]}/{$psnID[0]}/{$psnID}/card.png";
echo $url; // should output http://card.mmos.com/psn/profile/pa/p/parker-94/card.png

PHP:

 

I think Gray Fox misread the question slightly, should be:

$psnID = "parker-94";
$url = "http://card.mmos.com/psn/profile/{$psnID[0]}{$psnID[1]}/{$psnID[2]}/{$psnID}/card.png";
echo $url; // should output http://card.mmos.com/psn/profile/pa/r/parker-94/card.png

PHP:

Here's an alternate way of doing it:

$psnID = "parker-94";
$url = 'http://card.mmos.com/psn/profile/' . substr($psnID, 0, 2) . '/' . substr($psnID, 2, 1) . '/' . $psnID . '/card.png';
echo $url; // should output http://card.mmos.com/psn/profile/pa/r/parker-94/card.png

PHP: