Journey to Explore Generative AI

The Shortest ChatGPT Script Tutorial

Learn and Use the ChatGPT API Under 20 Lines of Code

Photo by Sarah Dorweiler on Unsplash

To fully explore ChatGPT as a developer, learning how to use its powerful API is essential. However, when searching for simple tutorials, I often found lengthy and complex scripts.

So, I decided to create a concise script — under 20 lines of Python — to demonstrate how to interface with ChatGPT efficiently.

The Code

Let’s not talk too much. Here’s the code

import openai

openai.api_key = "API-KEY"
openai.base_url = "BASE-URL"

prompt = input("Chat: ")

try:
    response = openai.chat.completions.create(
        model="gpt-4o",
        messages=[{"role": "user", "content": prompt}],
        max_tokens=150,
    )
    print(response.choices[0].message.content.strip())
except Exception as e:
    print(f"Error occurred: {e}")    

By providing the API key (and optionally the base URL), you can run the script, get a input to provide a prompt to the ChatGPT API, and receive a response.

python3 sample-code-above.py

Sample output as below

Chat: Tell me something funny
Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make…