POSTing HTML into a database

Hi I need a user to be able to enter submit HTML code (also perhaps containing PHP code) via a web form, which will then be entered into a database. The data is typed in to a textarea, which is then posted to my script. I notice that some special characters come out of this process escaped, but the escaping sequence does not appear to be entirely compatible with the SQL query I'm using to insert it into a table. Can anyone tell me the correct way to convert the output from the form into a format that PostgreSQL will accept, and then how to convert it back so that it's identical to what the user entered before being escaped by post (so that I can just use print to print it out)? Thanks. --jaa