Skip to content

OpenAI Assistants API tutorial

Import relevant libraries

!pip install --upgrade openai
import os 
from openai import OpenAI 

Environment configuration

OPENAI_API_KEY="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"

os.environ["OPENAI_API_KEY"] = OPENAI_API_KEY
client = OpenAI()

File Upload

def upload_file(file_path):
    
    # Upload a file with an "assistants" purpose
    file_to_upload = client.files.create(
      file=open(file_path, "rb"),
      purpose='assistants'
    )
    
    return file_to_upload
# Path to the file to upload: 
transformer_paper_path = "./data/transformer_paper.pdf"
uploaded_file = upload_file(transformer_paper_path)

The above instruction automatically uploads the transformer_paper.pdf to your OpenAI account, in the "files" section.

uploaded_file

Assistant Creation

def create_assistant(assistant_name, 
                     my_instruction, 
                     uploaded_file,
                     model="gpt-4-1106-preview"):
    
    my_assistant = client.beta.assistants.create(
    name = assistant_name,
    instructions = my_instruction,
    model="gpt-4-1106-preview",
    tools=[{"type": "retrieval"}],
    file_ids=[uploaded_file.id]
    )
    
    return my_assistant
# Create the assistant
inst="You are a polite and expert knowledge retrieval assistant. Use the documents provided as a knowledge base to answer questions"
assistant_name="Scientific Paper Assistant"

my_assistant = create_assistant(assistant_name, inst, uploaded_file)