ch07 - OpenAI API key

[d-kleine]

As an alternative idea how to store the OpenAI API key, you can store the key in an environment variable in a .env file. This is a safer way because you can store your key there without exposing in directly in the notebook, and the .env won't be pushed to your repo (should be included in the .gitignore). As a reference, I have done this some time ago for a project with a documentation for the OpenAI API key set up.

[rasbt]

I personally have those exported as environment variables as well, but I am not sure if that would work the same way on Windows?
(I tried to keep it as simple as possible to avoid extra complexity)

[d-kleine]

Sure, I had no problems with that on Windows. I just tested it, worked for me on Windows 10:

This is the code:

import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv
from openai import OpenAI

# Load environment variables from the .env file
load_dotenv()

# Get the OpenAI API key from the environment variable
api_key = os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY")

# Initialize the OpenAI client with the API key
client = OpenAI(api_key=api_key)

For that, I also needed to download an extra package python-dotenv with pip install python-dotenv.

As an idea to reduce complexity for readers, you could provide a template .env file in the folder, like
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-

The OpenAI key always starts with sk-. When having pushed the template .env file, you could add it the .gitignore that users cannot push it anymore. Then the user just needs to add his key in the file afte the sk-, like sk-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

[d-kleine]

BTW, as I saw that from installing the extra packages, there is a missing 't' (exra -> extra) missing in the installation steps in the notebooks of ch07:
pip install -r requirements-exra.txt

[rasbt]

Thanks for outlining this, I usually try to avoid saving it in any file altogether and do an export OPENAI_API_KEY="my key" in my current terminal session and then a os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY"). The python-dotenv approach sounds good though. I guess that's better than adding it the main notebook itself because then you can add the file to the .gitignore like you suggested.

However, instead of introducing another dependency with python-dotenv, I don't see a downside in just saving it as a JSON file (please correct me if I'm wrong). I'd say the fewer dependencies the better (because the fewer things can break in the future).

Adding it here in #184

[d-kleine]

Sounds reasonable 👍🏻 Just tested and ran both notebooks, worked fine for me! ✔️

[d-kleine]

I just saw that the config.json files will be listed in the Git source control when added the personal secret key, even though they have been added to the .gitignore. I believe this is because they have been pushed as a template for this repository, and therefore cannot be ignored.

As an idea, maybe you could remove the files (undo gitignoring config.json files, deleting them, push changes, adding them again to .gitignore) and just provide the template for the config.json as text in the README, so that readers need to create the files locally on their own (being ignored from Git source control).

@rasbt Can you please take a look into that again?