How to Implement Chat-based Support Tickets with ChatGPT PHP in a Custom WordPress Plugin

Posted on 17th June 2023

Using ChatGPT PHP to Create a Custom Plugin

In this tutorial, we’re going to show you how to use ChatGPT PHP to create a custom WordPress plugin that will enable chat-based support tickets. This is a great way to offer support to your users, as it allows them to get help directly from you or your team, without having to go through the hassle of opening a support ticket.

We’ll be using the ChatGPT PHP SDK to power our plugin. ChatGPT is a service that enables you to add chat-based support to your website or application. It’s easy to use and provides a robust set of features, making it the perfect choice for our plugin.

Creating the Plugin

First, let’s create the plugin. We’ll call it “ChatGPT Support Tickets”. Create a new directory called “chatgpt-support-tickets” in your WordPress plugin directory (wp-content/plugins/). Inside this new directory, create a file called “chatgpt-support-tickets.php”.

Now, open “chatgpt-support-tickets.php” in your text editor and add the following code:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: ChatGPT Support Tickets
Plugin URI: https://yourwebsite.com/chatgpt-support-tickets
Description: A plugin that enables chat-based support tickets.
Version: 1.0
Author: Your Name
Author URI: https://yourwebsite.com
License: GPLv2 or later
*/
?>

This is the basic code for a WordPress plugin. We’ve given our plugin a name, description, and version number. We’ve also specified the author (which is you) and a license (GPLv2 or later).

Now that we have the basic plugin skeleton in place, let’s start adding some functionality.

Adding the ChatGPT PHP SDK

The first thing we need to do is add the ChatGPT PHP SDK to our plugin. This will give us access to the ChatGPT API, which we’ll use to power our plugin.

ChatGPT provides a PHP SDK, which makes it easy to use the ChatGPT API in PHP. The SDK is available on GitHub, and can be installed using Composer.

If you’re not familiar with Composer, it’s a tool for managing PHP dependencies. It’s similar to npm for Node.js or pip for Python. You can learn more about Composer here.

To install the ChatGPT PHP SDK using Composer, first, create a file called “composer.json” in the root of your plugin directory (wp-content/plugins/chatgpt-support-tickets/). Add the following code to “composer.json”:

{
    "require": {
        "chatgpt/chatgpt-php": "^1.0"
    }
}

This tells Composer that our plugin requires the ChatGPT PHP SDK, version 1.0 or higher.

Next, open a terminal window and navigate to the root of your plugin directory (wp-content/plugins/chatgpt-support-tickets/). Then, run the following command:

composer install

This will install the ChatGPT PHP SDK in our plugin directory.

Now that the SDK is installed, we can start using it in our plugin. Open “chatgpt-support-tickets.php” in your text editor and add the following code:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: ChatGPT Support Tickets
Plugin URI: https://yourwebsite.com/chatgpt-support-tickets
Description: A plugin that enables chat-based support tickets.
Version: 1.0
Author: Your Name
Author URI: https://yourwebsite.com
License: GPLv2 or later
*/

require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

use ChatGPTChatGPT;

$apiKey = "YOUR_API_KEY";
$chatgpt = new ChatGPT($apiKey);
?>

First, we include the Composer autoloader, which will load the ChatGPT PHP SDK for us. Then, we use the ChatGPT namespace and create a new ChatGPT instance passing in our API key. You can find your API key in the ChatGPT documentation.

Now that we have the ChatGPT PHP SDK in our plugin, we can start using it to power our plugin.

Enabling Support Tickets

The first thing we need to do is enable support tickets. We can do this by calling the “enableSupportTickets” method on our ChatGPT instance. This method accepts a callback function, which will be called when a support ticket is created. The callback function will be passed an array of data about the support ticket, which we can use to do whatever we want (such as sending an email, or creating a new support ticket in our own system).

For our plugin, we’re going to send an email to our support team whenever a new support ticket is created. To do this, we’ll use the mail function. This function is built into PHP, and makes it easy to send emails from PHP. We’ll also use the json_encode function to format the data about the support ticket as JSON, so that we can easily read it in our email.

Open “chatgpt-support-tickets.php” in your text editor and add the following code:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: ChatGPT Support Tickets
Plugin URI: https://yourwebsite.com/chatgpt-support-tickets
Description: A plugin that enables chat-based support tickets.
Version: 1.0
Author: Your Name
Author URI: https://yourwebsite.com
License: GPLv2 or later
*/

require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

use ChatGPTChatGPT;

$apiKey = "YOUR_API_KEY";
$chatgpt = new ChatGPT($apiKey);

$chatgpt->enableSupportTickets(function ($data) {
    $to = "support@yourwebsite.com";
    $subject = "New Support Ticket";
    $body = json_encode($data);
    mail($to, $subject, $body);
});
?>

In the code above, we’ve added a call to the “enableSupportTickets” method. This method accepts a callback function, which we’ve defined inline. This callback function accepts an array of data about the support ticket, which we’ve named “$data”.

Inside the callback function, we’ve defined the email address to send the support ticket to, the subject of the email, and the body of the email. We’ve set the body of the email to be the JSON-encoded data about the support ticket, so that we can easily read it in our email.

Finally, we’ve called the mail function, passing in the to address, subject, and body of the email. This will send an email to our support team whenever a new support ticket is created.

Now that we’ve enabled support tickets, let’s add a chat widget to our WordPress site so that our users can start creating support tickets.

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