Mysql UUID as id

Hello,

I want to use UUID as the id and primary key in my tables/Models.

I tried a database before insert trigger but threw an error. One solution is to use an auto increment id then an additional uuid field I guess.

The other solution I was working on was in the model with beforeValidationOnCreate() but the only way I could find to create a UUID was to setup another connection. Using Models Manager threw a syntax errror

    public function beforeValidationOnCreate()
    {

        //Db credentials

        $db_config = array(
            "host" => "localhost",
            "username" => "xxx",
            "password" => "xxx",
            "dbname" => "xxx"
        );

        // Create a connection
        $this->conn = new \Phalcon\Db\Adapter\Pdo\Mysql($db_config);

        try {

            $query = $this->conn->query("SELECT UUID()");
            $result = $query->fetch();
            $this->id = $result[0];
            $this->date_entered = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');

        } catch (PDOException $e) {

            print_r($e->getMessage());

        }

    }

While this works and I can use in a base model class and extend the ohters it seems like there should be a better way. Any ideas?

Thanks