How to setup the API
This guide shows how to set up the API key and other environment variables (e.g., base URL) so that you can seamlessly communicate with the Large Language Model (LLM).
Users are recommended to review the third party API key section of the disclaimer documentation.
OpenAI
To communicate with the OpenAI API, you need to provide the API key. Additionally, you might need to provide the base URL if you are using a custom OpenAI resource endpoint.
Setup the API key
There are two common ways to set up the API key in a development environment.
Method 1 (recommended): Set up the API key for a single project
To make the API key available for a specific project, you can set it in a .env
file. Then, you can load the API key from the .env file in your development environment.
Avoid committing the .env file if you are using a version control system such as Git.
You can add .env to your .gitignore file to avoid committing it.
By default, when vizro-ai is imported, it automatically loads the .env file.
This file is searched for in the current directory and, if not found, the search continues upwards through the directory hierarchy.
Customizing the .env file location and name
If you would like to customize the .env file location and name, you can set it manually.
The default import of the .env file can be overridden by specifying the path and name.
Here's how you can do it:
from dotenv import load_dotenv, find_dotenv
from pathlib import Path
# Specify the exact path to your .env file
env_file = Path.cwd() / ".env" # Adjust the path as needed
# Alternatively, specify a different .env file name
env_file = find_dotenv(".env.dev") # Replace ".env.dev" with your file name
# Load the specified .env file
load_dotenv(env_file)
Method 2: Set up the API key as an environment variable for all projects
To make the API key available for all projects, you can set it as an environment variable. Please refer to the section "Setup your API key for all projects" in the OpenAI documentation. (It is under the dropdown of Step 2: Setup your API key).
It provides step-by-step instructions for setting up the API key as an environment variable, on operating systems including Windows and MacOS.
Setup the Base URL (optional)
The API Base URL used for the OpenAI connector is set to https://api.openai.com/v1 by default.
If you are using a custom API endpoint, you can set it as an environment variable.
This is usually for organizational users. For example, if your organization has designed API gateway, you can change the API endpoint here.
You can follow the approach in the section "Setup your API key for all projects
(recommended)" to add the environment variable OPENAI_API_BASE to your environment.