Open AI

OpenAI provides cutting-edge artificial intelligence capabilities through advanced language models, enabling businesses to integrate powerful AI features including text generation, analysis, translation, and conversational AI into their applications and workflows for enhanced productivity and innovation.

Power end-to-end data operations for your Open AI API with Nexla. Our bi-directional Open AI connector is purpose-built for Open AI, making it simple to ingest data, sync it across systems, and deliver it anywhere — all with no coding required. Nexla turns API-sourced data into ready-to-use, reusable data products and makes it easy to send data to Open AI or any other destination. With comprehensive monitoring, lineage tracking, and access controls, Nexla keeps your Open AI workflows fast, secure, and fully governed.

Features

Type: API

SourceDestination

• Seamless API Integration: Connect to any endpoint as source or destination without coding, with automatic data product creation
• Visual Composition & Chaining: Build complex integrations using visual templates, chain API calls, and compose workflows with data validation and filtering
• API Proxy: Expose curated slices of your data securely with a secure and customizable API proxy that validates and transforms data on the fly
• Request optimization with intelligent batching, retry, and caching to minimize API calls and costs

Prerequisites

Before creating an OpenAI credential, you need to obtain your API key from your OpenAI account. OpenAI uses API key authentication for all API requests, with the API key sent in the Authorization header with the Bearer prefix.

To obtain your OpenAI API key, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your OpenAI account, or create a new account at OpenAI.

2. Navigate to your account dashboard or profile settings in the OpenAI interface.

3. Click on your profile icon or account name in the top right corner, and select API keys or navigate to Settings > API keys.

4. If you don't have an API key yet, click Create new secret key or + Create new secret key to create a new API key.

5. Configure your API key settings:

   • Enter a name for the API key (e.g., "Nexla Integration")
   • Review and select the permissions or scopes for the key (if applicable)

6. Click Create secret key to create the API key.

7. Copy the API key immediately after it's generated, as it may not be accessible again after you navigate away from the page. The API key will be displayed only once.

8. Store the API key securely, as you will need it to configure your Nexla credential. The API key is sensitive information and should be kept confidential.

The API key is sent in the Authorization header with the Bearer prefix (e.g., Authorization: Bearer {api_key}) for all API requests to the OpenAI API. The API key authenticates your requests and grants access to OpenAI resources based on your account plan and usage limits. If your API key is compromised, you should immediately revoke it in your OpenAI account settings and generate a new one. For detailed information about obtaining API keys, API authentication, and available endpoints, refer to the OpenAI API documentation.

Authenticate

Credentials required

Field	Required	Secret	Description
API Key Value	Yes	Yes

Create a credential in Nexla

1. After selecting the data source/destination type, click the Add Credential tile to open the Add New Credential overlay.

New Credential Overlay – OpenAI

2. Enter a name for the credential in the Credential Name field and a short, meaningful description in the Credential Description field.

3. Enter your OpenAI API key in the API Key Value field. This is the API key you obtained from your OpenAI account settings (API keys section). The API key is sent in the Authorization: Bearer {api_key} header for all API requests to the OpenAI API. The API key is sensitive information and must be kept confidential.

   Your OpenAI API key can be found in your OpenAI account settings under the API keys section (Settings > API keys). The API key is sent in the Authorization: Bearer {api_key} header for all API requests to the OpenAI API.

   If your API key is compromised, you should immediately revoke it in your OpenAI account settings and generate a new one. The API key provides access to your OpenAI account and should be treated as sensitive information. Keep your API key secure and do not share it publicly.

   For detailed information about obtaining API keys, API authentication, and available endpoints, see the OpenAI API documentation.

4. Click the Save button at the bottom of the overlay. The newly added credential will now appear in a tile on the Authenticate screen during data source/destination creation.

Use as a data source

To create a new data flow, navigate to the Integrate section, and click the New Data Flow button. Select the OpenAI connector tile, then select the credential that will be used to connect to your OpenAI account, and click Next; or, create a new OpenAI credential for use in this flow.

Endpoint templates

Nexla provides pre-built templates that can be used to rapidly configure data sources to interact with common OpenAI endpoints. Select the endpoint from which this source will fetch data from the Endpoint pulldown menu. Available endpoint templates are listed in the expandable boxes below.

List Files

This endpoint template returns a list of files that belong to your OpenAI organization. Use this template when you need to retrieve information about files you've uploaded to OpenAI, such as training data files, fine-tuning files, or other files used with OpenAI services.

• This endpoint automatically retrieves all files from your OpenAI organization. No additional configuration is required beyond selecting this endpoint template.

This endpoint returns a list of files that belong to your OpenAI organization, including file IDs, file names, file sizes, creation dates, and file purposes. Use this endpoint to discover which files are available in your OpenAI account before using them with other OpenAI endpoints.

For detailed information about file management, API response structures, and available file data, see the OpenAI API documentation.

List Assistants

This endpoint template returns a list of assistants from your OpenAI account. Use this template when you need to retrieve information about your OpenAI assistants, including assistant configurations, models, and settings.

• This endpoint automatically retrieves all assistants from your OpenAI account. The endpoint uses cursor-based pagination to handle large datasets efficiently.

This endpoint returns a list of assistants from your OpenAI account, including assistant IDs, names, models, instructions, and configurations. The endpoint uses cursor-based pagination with after parameter to handle large datasets efficiently. Nexla will automatically fetch subsequent pages of data by using the cursor returned in the API response.

For detailed information about assistant management, API response structures, pagination, and available assistant data, see the OpenAI API documentation.

Chat Completions

This endpoint template sends a chat completion request to the OpenAI API and retrieves the AI-generated response. Use this template when you need to interact with OpenAI's language models to generate text, answer questions, or perform natural language processing tasks.

• Enter the model name in the Model field. This should be the name of the OpenAI model you want to use (e.g., gpt-4, gpt-3.5-turbo, gpt-4-turbo). The model name determines which OpenAI model will be used for processing requests. Refer to the OpenAI API documentation for available models.
• Enter your message or prompt in the Message field. This should be the text you want to send to the OpenAI model for processing. The message is sent as part of a chat completion request with the role set to "user" and the content set to your message. The OpenAI model will process this message and generate an appropriate response.
• Enter the temperature value in the Temperature field. This should be a number between 0 and 2 that controls the randomness of the model's output. Lower values make the output more deterministic, while higher values make it more creative. Typical values range from 0.7 to 1.0.
• Enter the maximum number of tokens in the Max Tokens field. This should be the maximum number of tokens the model can generate in the response. The token limit helps control response length and API costs.

This endpoint sends a POST request to the OpenAI chat completion endpoint with your message and model configuration in the request body. The request body format includes the model name, messages array, temperature, and max_tokens. The endpoint returns the AI-generated response from the OpenAI model.

Different models may have different capabilities, response times, and costs. Temperature controls the randomness of the output, and max_tokens controls the response length. For detailed information about available models, chat completion formats, API endpoints, and response structures, see the OpenAI API documentation.

Once the selected endpoint template has been configured, click the Test button to the right of the endpoint selection menu to retrieve a sample of the data that will be fetched. Sample data will be displayed in the Endpoint Test Result panel on the right, allowing you to verify that the source is configured correctly before saving.

Manual configuration

OpenAI data sources can also be manually configured to interact with any valid OpenAI API endpoint, including endpoints not covered by the pre-built templates, chained API calls, or custom request parameters. Select the Advanced tab at the top of the configuration screen, and follow the instructions in Connect to Any API to configure the API method, endpoint URL, date/time and lookup macros, path to data, metadata, and request headers.

OpenAI API endpoints typically use the GET method to retrieve data (e.g., https://api.openai.com/v1/files, https://api.openai.com/v1/assistants) and the POST method for chat completions and other operations that require a JSON request body (e.g., {"model": "{model_name}", "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "{your_message}"}]}). Set the Response Data Path to $.data[*] to extract items from a data array, or $.choices[*] to extract choices from a chat completion response, depending on the selected endpoint.

Once all of the relevant settings have been configured, click the Next button to proceed with the rest of the data flow configuration, or click Save to save the data source configuration for later use.

Use as a destination

Click the + icon on the Nexset that will be sent to the OpenAI destination, and select the Send to Destination option from the menu. Select the OpenAI connector from the list of available destination connectors, then select the credential that will be used to connect to your OpenAI account, and click Next; or, create a new OpenAI credential for use in this flow.

Endpoint templates

Nexla provides pre-built templates that can be used to rapidly configure destinations to send data to common OpenAI endpoints. Select the endpoint to which data will be sent from the Endpoint pulldown menu. Then, click on the template in the list below to expand it, and follow the instructions to configure additional endpoint settings.

Upload file

This endpoint template uploads a file to your OpenAI account that can be used across various endpoints. Use this template when you need to upload training data files, fine-tuning files, or other files for use with OpenAI services. The size of all files uploaded by one organization can be up to 100 GB.

• This endpoint automatically uploads files from your data. No additional configuration is required beyond selecting this endpoint template. The request body should contain the file data in JSON format.

This endpoint sends data as JSON in the request body to upload a file to your OpenAI account. The request body should contain the file data and file metadata. Uploaded files can be used with various OpenAI endpoints, including fine-tuning, embeddings, and other services.

For detailed information about file uploads, request body formats, file size limits, and available file types, see the OpenAI API documentation.

Create image

This endpoint template generates a new image using OpenAI's image generation models. Use this template when you need to create images from text prompts or modify existing images using AI-powered image generation capabilities.

• This endpoint automatically generates images from your data. No additional configuration is required beyond selecting this endpoint template. The request body should contain the image generation parameters in JSON format, including the prompt and any additional configuration options.

This endpoint sends data as JSON in the request body to generate a new image using OpenAI's image generation models. The request body should contain the prompt (text description of the image to generate) and any additional configuration options such as image size, number of images, and image format.

For detailed information about image generation, request body formats, available models, and image configuration options, see the OpenAI API documentation.

Create Embedding

This endpoint template creates an embedding vector representing the input text. Use this template when you need to generate vector embeddings for text data, which can be used for semantic search, similarity matching, or other machine learning applications.

• This endpoint automatically creates embeddings from your data. No additional configuration is required beyond selecting this endpoint template. The request body should contain the text data and model configuration in JSON format.

This endpoint sends data as JSON in the request body to create embedding vectors for input text. The request body should contain the input text and the embedding model name. The endpoint returns embedding vectors that represent the semantic meaning of the input text.

For detailed information about embeddings, request body formats, available embedding models, and vector dimensions, see the OpenAI API documentation.

Manual configuration

OpenAI destinations can also be manually configured to send data to any valid OpenAI API endpoint. Select the Advanced tab at the top of the configuration screen, and follow the instructions in Connect to Any API to configure the API method, data format, endpoint URL, request headers, attribute exclusions, record batching, and response webhooks.

OpenAI API destinations typically use the POST method and expect JSON request bodies (e.g., https://api.openai.com/v1/files, https://api.openai.com/v1/images/generations, https://api.openai.com/v1/embeddings). The request body format is typically {message.json} to send the entire Nexset record as JSON, or a custom JSON structure with field mappings matching the target endpoint's expected schema (files, images, embeddings, etc.).

Save & activate

Once all endpoint settings have been configured, click the Done button in the upper right corner of the screen to save and create the destination. To send the data to the configured OpenAI endpoint, open the destination resource menu, and select Activate.

The Nexset data will not be sent to the OpenAI endpoint until the destination is activated. Destinations can be activated immediately or at a later time, providing full control over data movement.