How to generate a token in PHP (copied from: https://security.stackexchange.com/a/40312)

php_generate_token.php

<?php
function generateToken($length = 24) {
        if(function_exists('openssl_random_pseudo_bytes')) {
            $token = base64_encode(openssl_random_pseudo_bytes($length, $strong));
            if($strong == TRUE)
                return strtr(substr($token, 0, $length), '+/=', '-_,'); //base64 is about 33% longer, so we need to truncate the result
        }

        //fallback to mt_rand if php < 5.3 or no openssl available
        $characters = '0123456789';
        $characters .= 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz/+'; 
        $charactersLength = strlen($characters)-1;
        $token = '';

        //select some random characters
        for ($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++) {
            $token .= $characters[mt_rand(0, $charactersLength)];
        }        

        return $token;
}
?>