Create a GUID in PHP

I recently had the need to generate a GUID as part of a PHP based application.  To do this I used the following code:

function getGUID(){

    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;
    }
}
To use the above functon:
$GUID = getGUID();
echo $GUID;

Reference:

http://guid.us/GUID/PHP