How to Create Contextual Chatbot Responses with ChatGPT PHP in a Custom WordPress Plugin

Posted on 17th June 2023

Introduction

In this guide, we’ll show you how to create contextual chatbot responses using ChatGPT PHP in a custom WordPress plugin. You’ll learn how to:

  • Set up your development environment
  • Create a custom WordPress plugin
  • Install and configure the ChatGPT PHP SDK
  • Integrate the ChatGPT PHP SDK into your plugin

Prerequisites

Before you begin, you’ll need the following:

  • A text editor or IDE
  • A local development environment for WordPress
  • Composer installed on your development machine
  • A ChatGPT account. If you don’t have one, you can sign up for a free trial here.

Setting Up Your Development Environment

To set up your development environment, you’ll need to install WordPress locally. We recommend using Varying Vagrant Vagrants (VVV). Once VVV is installed, follow the instructions here to install the VVV Dashboard.

Once the VVV Dashboard is installed, follow the instructions here to add a new WordPress site. Be sure to select the “Custom” type when prompted.

Creating a Custom WordPress Plugin

Now that you have WordPress installed, you can create a custom plugin to hold your ChatGPT code. To do this, create a new directory in the wp-content/plugins directory of your WordPress installation, and give it a name such as my-chatbot-plugin.

In this new directory, create a file named my-chatbot-plugin.php. The contents of this file will be as follows:

‘YOUR_API_KEY’,
‘apiSecret’ => ‘YOUR_API_SECRET’
)
);
?>

Replace the YOUR_API_KEY and YOUR_API_SECRET placeholders with your ChatGPT API key and API secret, which you can find in the ChatGPT Dashboard under the “Settings” tab.

Installing and Configuring the ChatGPT PHP SDK

Now that you have a custom plugin, you can install the ChatGPT PHP SDK using Composer. To do this, change to the plugin directory and run the following command:

composer require chatgpt/sdk

This will install the ChatGPT PHP SDK in the vendor directory of your plugin.

Integrating the ChatGPT PHP SDK into Your Plugin

Now that the ChatGPT PHP SDK is installed, you can integrate it into your plugin. To do this, edit the my-chatbot-plugin.php file and add the following code:

‘YOUR_API_KEY’,
‘apiSecret’ => ‘YOUR_API_SECRET’
)
);

// add a shortcode for the chatbot
add_shortcode( ‘my_chatbot’, ‘my_chatbot_func’ );

// the function to run when the shortcode is used
function my_chatbot_func( $atts ) {
global $chatgpt;

// get the user’s input
$input = isset( $_POST[‘input’] ) ? $_POST[‘input’] : ”;

// get the context from the URL
$context = isset( $_GET[‘context’] ) ? $_GET[‘context’] : ”;

// send the input and context to ChatGPT and get a response
$response = $chatgpt->getResponse( $input, $context );

// return the response
return $response[‘output’];
}
?>

This code does the following:

  • Includes the Composer autoloader
  • Includes the ChatGPT PHP SDK
  • Sets up the ChatGPT PHP SDK
  • Adds a [my_chatbot] shortcode
  • Defines a function to run when the shortcode is used

The function does the following:

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