OpenAI

In this article series, we'll explore how you can connect to OpenAI using the API Connector. We recommend you start by reading this article to set up an account an API key, then move on to authentication and finally the call(s) you are looking for.

OpenAI documentation

OpenAI’s documentation provides thorough information about both the authentication process and how to set up calls.

External page: OpenAI API reference | Authentication

API Connector

The API Connector is the plugin we'll use to authenticate and sell requests to ChatGPT. You can find our documentation for the API Connector plugin below.

Article: The API Connector Article series: APIs Video: Bubble Academy | Intro to APIs & The API Connector

API glossary

This article series includes several terms and expressions that are common in the broader tech field, particularly those used by API providers, which are not unique to Bubble. To understand these terms better, we recommend referring to our dedicated API glossary, which provides clear explanations for many of these technical concepts.

Article: API Glossary

OpenAI API platform and documentation

The first thing we can extract from OpenAI’s API documentation is that they use API keys for authentication. This means you need to generate an API key through the OpenAI platform.

Setting up an API key

The first thing you need to do if you haven’t already, is to create an account with OpenAI. This lets you set up API keys, set up billing and manage details about your account and the OpenAI tools you want to use.

External pages: OpenAI platform | Sign up/Log in

After going through the required steps to sign up, navigate to the API keys section. This is where you will create new keys and manage those you have already created.

OpenAI maintains a strict secret API key policy that doesn’t allow you to see your API key after having seen it the first time. We strongly recommend that you store your API key in a secure environment, like a password manager.

To avoid API keys becoming visible in your app's code, you should only ever store the keys in the proper place in the API Connector.

Article: API Security

We recommend setting up a unique API key for each app where you want to use the API, so that you can control the permissions of each key tailored to each individual app. This also lets you replace the API key in the event of it being misplaced, without having to replace it in multiple apps.

Permissions

The Permissions setting lets you control what a specific API key has access to. Permissions come in three levels:

Permission Level	Description
All	Grants full permissions for the secret key. This is the default setting for new keys.
Restricted	Allows specific permissions (None, Read, Write) to be set for each endpoint, enabling customized access control.
Read only	Provides read permissions for all endpoints, but prohibits any write operations.

Each endpoint gives you access to a resource, and you can control the permissions an API key has to individual resources.

Now that we have the API key, we can set up the authentication in the API Connector.

Authentication with OpenAI

The first part of setting up a connection to OpenAI, is to authenticate. Authentication is the process of letting the API know who you are (similar to logging in to an app), so that the API can determine what services you have authorization to use.

Article: Authenticating with OpenAI