strapi-open-ai-text-generation VS strapi-plugin-config-sync

: acts as our input for prompts; we use onChange() ‘watcher’ to update the value of our prompt state as we type data. We then store the prompt in a variable called prompt. TextArea />: is what we use to store the value of our generated text. We use a to edit the generated text. We use a special implementation of our onChange() watcher, which allows us to pass an object of multiple values to update when a change occurs in that component.

We also have two buttons where all the magic happens. One button calls generateText() - this function uses fetch to call our backend service, /ai-text-generation/generate-text that makes authenticated calls to the Open AI API (we’ll create this next). To authenticate this, we use auth from @strapi/helper-plugin which helps us make a secure request to the Strapi service we’ll create using the Admins token.

We then parse our result and use the special implementation of onChange() to pass the parsed response as the content that will get added to our database with onChange({ target: { name, value: parsedResult, type: attribute.type } }).

The other button calls clearGeneratedText() - this function clears all the text the AI generated in case we want to start over. At this point, our application should look something like this.

Building a Custom Open AI Route in Strapi

To access Open AI, we need to provide an API KEY; having this key in the admin poses a security risk, and to combat that, we’ll create a custom route that, when called, makes an API call to Open AIs API and returns the generated text that we can then send to the admin.

So start, in our ./config/plugins.js file add a config object below enabled: true, your config file after should look like this:

// …
'ai-text-generation': {
      enabled: true,
      config: {
        apiToken: process.env.OPEN_AI_API_TOKEN,
      },
      resolve: './src/plugins/ai-text-generation'
    },

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Now, create a file called open-ai.js in ./src/plugins/ai-text-generation/server/services and paste the following code in it.

For the code to work, you will also have to install axios, for that navigate to your plugin root and type yarn add axios

'use strict';

const axios = require('axios');

module.exports = ({ strapi }) => ({

  async generateText(prompt) {
    try {
      const response = await axios(
        {
          url: 'https://api.openai.com/v1/completions',
          method: 'POST',
          headers: {
            'Content-Type': 'application/json',
            'Authorization': `Bearer ${strapi.plugin('ai-text-generation').config('apiToken')}`
          },
          data: JSON.stringify({
            'model': 'text-davinci-001',
            'prompt': `${prompt}`,
            'temperature': 0.4,
            'max_tokens': 64,
            'top_p': 1,
            'frequency_penalty': 0,
            'presence_penalty': 0
          })
        })

      return response.data;
    }
    catch (err) {
      console.log(err.response)
    }

  }

});

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Here we define a function generateText() that takes a prompt as an argument. We then use prompt as a parameter in our request to Open AI.

Next up, in the same services folder, paste the following code in your index.js file.

'use strict';

const openAi = require('./open-ai');

module.exports = {
  openAi,
};

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This code registers a service in Strapi that we call from a controller, before we do that. We need to create a controller. In ./src/plugins/ai-text-generation/server/controllers, create a file called ai-controller.js and paste the following code in it:

'use strict';

module.exports = ({ strapi }) => ({
  async generate(ctx) {
    ctx.body = await strapi
      .plugin('ai-text-generation')
      .service('openAi')
      .generateText(ctx.request.body.prompt);
  },
});

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In this file, we call the generateText() function that we defined in the service we just made and pass ctx.request.body.prompt (from our POST request).

In the same folder, we need to paste the following code in our index.js file:

'use strict';

const aiController = require('./ai-controller');

module.exports = {
  aiController,
};

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Lastly, we must create a route to access the controller we just created. In ./src/plugins/ai-text-generation/server/routes we need to paste the following code:

module.exports = [
  {
    method: 'POST',
    path: '/generate-text',
    handler: 'aiController.generate',
    config: {
      policies: [],
    },
  },
];

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In this file, we define how our endpoint should behave. With this code, we create a POST method on the /generate-text URI and pass the aiController controller we created to define its behavior.

In your preferred API client, you can now make a request to localhost:1337/ai-text-generation/generate-text and you should get AI-generated text as a response. Be sure to add your prompt as a parameter and pass your admin JWT for authentication.

We should also get a response when we enter a prompt and click “generate” in our Custom Field.

Publishing to npm

Maxime from the Strapi team wrote an amazing article on how to publish your plugin to npm, and if you have any trouble you can refer to my package.json file for how to structure yours.

You can also take your Custom field to the next level and submit it to the official Strapi marketplace.

Hopefully, you have a better idea of how to build Custom fields now, and even better, you have a custom field that generates content for you with Open AI.

Let us know if you build something, the Strapi community will be excited to try it out. Take care.

Strapi wouldn’t be anything without its community, which is very much represented by its Community Stars. The Write for the Community program resulted in 148 new articles being published, for a total of 1.3M views. 2022 was also the year of the launch of the Strapi Community Organization, a group of community members dedicated to empowering initiatives and highlighting them. Boaz, Mattie, Sacha, and Simen have been invaluable contributors to the Strapi Community, going above and beyond by developing open-source plugins and tools. Strapi config-sync plugin, mattie-strapi-bundle (for search), Strapi REST cache plugin, Dockerize tool, and more!

Boaz, Developer and creator of the Strapi config-sync plugin.

For the config-sync plugin specifically, I would love to have environment specific configs, allowing you to have different configs for staging/acceptance/production. This is not really a big issue yet, but as soon as we start getting more complex plugins that store their config in the database this can become very crucial. There is an issue for that on the GitHub repo.