Swiftorial Logo
Home
Swift Lessons
Tutorials
Learn More
Career
Resources

Basic OpenAI API Usage

Introduction

Welcome to the tutorial on the basic usage of the OpenAI API. This guide will walk you through the steps needed to integrate OpenAI's capabilities into your project. We will cover everything from getting an API key to making simple API requests.

Step 1: Obtain an API Key

To use the OpenAI API, you first need to sign up for an account on the OpenAI website. After signing up, you'll be able to generate an API key which will be used to authenticate your requests.

Example:

Navigate to OpenAI's Signup Page and follow the instructions to create an account and generate your API key.

Step 2: Install Required Libraries

Next, you need to install the OpenAI Python client library. This can be done using pip (Python's package installer).

Example Command:

pip install openai

Step 3: Setup Your Project

With the API key and the OpenAI library installed, you can now set up your project. In your Python script, import the OpenAI library and configure it with your API key.

Example Code:

import openai

# Set your API key
openai.api_key = 'your-api-key-here'

Step 4: Make Your First API Call

Let's make a simple API call to OpenAI's GPT-3 model. We will send a prompt and receive a generated response.

Example Code:

response = openai.Completion.create(
  engine="davinci-codex", # or any other engine like "text-davinci-003"
  prompt="Translate the following English text to French: 'Hello, how are you?'",
  max_tokens=60
)

print(response.choices[0].text.strip())

Expected Output:

Bonjour, comment ça va?

Step 5: Handling Responses

The response from the API call contains various information such as the generated text, usage statistics, and more. You can access these details through the response object.

Example Code:

response = openai.Completion.create(
  engine="davinci-codex",
  prompt="Translate the following English text to French: 'Hello, how are you?'",
  max_tokens=60
)

generated_text = response.choices[0].text.strip()
usage = response.usage

print(f"Generated Text: {generated_text}")
print(f"Tokens Used: {usage['total_tokens']}")

Expected Output:

Generated Text: Bonjour, comment ça va?

Tokens Used: 10

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we covered the basic usage of the OpenAI API. You learned how to obtain an API key, install the necessary libraries, set up your project, make API calls, and handle responses. With these steps, you are now ready to integrate OpenAI's powerful capabilities into your own projects.