(PHP 5)
com_create_guid — Generate a globally unique identifier (GUID)
Generates a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID).
A GUID is generated in the same way as DCE UUID's, except that the Microsoft convention is to enclose a GUID in curly braces.
Returns the GUID as a string.
The phunction PHP framework (http://sourceforge.net/projects/phunction/) uses the following function to generate valid version 4 UUIDs:
<?php
function GUID()
{
    if (function_exists('com_create_guid') === true)
    {
        return trim(com_create_guid(), '{}');
    }
    return sprintf('%04X%04X-%04X-%04X-%04X-%04X%04X%04X', mt_rand(0, 65535), mt_rand(0, 65535), mt_rand(0, 65535), mt_rand(16384, 20479), mt_rand(32768, 49151), mt_rand(0, 65535), mt_rand(0, 65535), mt_rand(0, 65535));
}
?>
The output generated by the sprintf() and mt_rand() calls is identical to com_create_guid() results.
A guid function that works in all php versions:
<?php
function guid(){
    if (function_exists('com_create_guid')){
        return com_create_guid();
    }else{
        mt_srand((double)microtime()*10000);//optional for php 4.2.0 and up.
        $charid = strtoupper(md5(uniqid(rand(), true)));
        $hyphen = chr(45);// "-"
        $uuid = chr(123)// "{"
                .substr($charid, 0, 8).$hyphen
                .substr($charid, 8, 4).$hyphen
                .substr($charid,12, 4).$hyphen
                .substr($charid,16, 4).$hyphen
                .substr($charid,20,12)
                .chr(125);// "}"
        return $uuid;
    }
}
echo guid();
?>