How do I generate a unique ID in Expression Engine 2?

Question

Is there an EE2 tag that produces a unique ID? Or would I need to embed a PHP uniqid() call to get the desired unique ID? Thanks.

Answer 1

No, there is not a EE tag that does that. It would require that you created your own plugin, extension or module. But that pretty simple.

My suggestion is to create a plugin.

Create a folder named guid in your expressionengine/third_party folder.
In that folder, create a file called pi.guid.php with the following content:

<?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

$plugin_info = array(
    'pi_name'       => 'Uniqid',
    'pi_version'        => '0.1',
    'pi_author'     => 'John Doe',
    'pi_author_url'     => 'http://example.org/',
    'pi_description'    => 'Returns uniqid() with parameters',
    'pi_usage'      => Guid::usage()
);


class Guid {
            
    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->EE =& get_instance();
    }
    
    public function uniqid()
    {
        $prefix = $this->EE->TMPL->fetch_param('prefix');
        $more_entropy = (strtolower($this->EE->TMPL->fetch_param('more_entropy')) == "true") ? TRUE : FALSE;
        
        return uniqid($prefix, $more_entropy);
    }
    
    public static function usage()
    {
        ob_start();  ?>

        Simple use:

    {exp:guid:uniqid}

        Parameter use:

    {exp:guid:uniqid prefix="yourprefix"}
    {exp:guid:uniqid more_entropy="true"}
    {exp:guid:uniqid prefix="yourprefix" more_entropy="true"}
    <?php
        $buffer = ob_get_contents();
        ob_end_clean();

        return $buffer;
    }    
}

There you go, your very own plugin to create uniqid() through tags.
The use?

{exp:guid:uniqid prefix="yourprefix"}
{exp:guid:uniqid more_entropy="true"}
{exp:guid:uniqid prefix="yourprefix" more_entropy="true"}

Awesome, right?
I love EE...

Answer 2

There is no built-in EE tag to output a unique ID, no.