From the course: Build with AI: Building a Project with the ChatGPT API

Authenticate to the OpenAI API

From the course: Build with AI: Building a Project with the ChatGPT API

Authenticate to the OpenAI API

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- [Instructor] Every powerful system needs a secret handshake, and OpenAI is no different. Before we can generate or build anything, we need access, and that starts with authentication. If you don't already have an OpenAI account, now's the time. Signing up is quick and free to start. Just head to platform.openai.com, and follow the prompts to create your account. Once you're in, you'll land on the OpenAI Dashboard. This is your command center for working with the API. From there, we'll generate an API key. This is what your app will use to securely communicate with OpenAI servers. You can think of it as your app's ID badge or handshake, something that says, "Hi, I'm allowed to be here" every time your application makes a request. Now, here's the important part. Your API key should be treated like a password. Don't hard-code it into your scripts. Don't upload it to GitHub. Don't share it with anyone. If your key gets exposed, someone else could use it, and those API calls will be billed to you. To avoid all that, I'll show you how to store your key using an environment variable. This is a secure way to keep sensitive information out of your code base, while still making it available to your application at runtime. You'll learn the quick steps for setting that up during your first hands-on challenge. Here, I've created a .env or an environment file. I've put in my OPENAI_API_KEY tag, and I've entered the value for my key. Now, let's go to the Jupyter Notebook and scroll down to this section where a key can be generated. Follow this link to go to your OpenAI account so that you can generate your API key that you then put in your environment file. Once we've generated the key and stored it securely in that environment file, we'll test it with a simple API call, just enough to confirm that everything's wired up correctly. We're not building anything complex yet. This is just a quick check to make sure the key is valid, and your setup is ready to go. Here, in these first lines, I'm importing the necessary libraries, openai, os, and from openai, I'm importing the OpenAI client. These next few lines here, I'm loading the environment file. These next few lines here, I'm setting up that OpenAI client, and I'm passing in the API key that I'm pulling from the environment file. If you run into issues with accessing your environment file, you can also un-comment this line and directly embed your API key for testing and troubleshooting. Once that handshake is in place, everything else in this course opens up. You'll be able to access OpenAI's models, make requests, generate content, and eventually build a fully functional, AI-powered agent. In the upcoming video, we'll dive into the Chat Completions API and start generating text using GPT. You'll see how simple prompts can turn into powerful outputs, and how to control the responses you get back.

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