fipamo/app/Helpers/StringHelpers.php

<?php

function createUUID()
{
    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)
    );
}

function safeString($string)
{
    return strtolower(
        trim(
            preg_replace(
                '~[^0-9a-z]+~i',
                '_',
                html_entity_decode(
                    preg_replace(
                        '~&([a-z]{1,2})(?:acute|cedil|circ|grave|lig|orn|ring|slash|th|tilde|uml);~i',
                        '$1',
                        htmlentities($string, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8')
                    ),
                    ENT_QUOTES,
                    'UTF-8'
                )
            ),
            '-'
        )
    );
}