Sending a Simple Query to DeepSeek Using PHP

Sending a Simple Query to DeepSeek

Welcome to the first lesson of our course on creating a personal tutor with DeepSeek! DeepSeek is an advanced AI platform that offers state-of-the-art language models capable of understanding and generating human-like text. Its unique features include high accuracy in language comprehension, the ability to generate contextually relevant responses, and a robust API that supports seamless integration into various applications. These capabilities make DeepSeek an excellent choice for building AI tutors, as it can provide personalized and insightful interactions with users. In this lesson, we will explore the basics of interacting with DeepSeek's AI models through a PHP client. Our goal is to send a simple query to DeepSeek's language model and receive a response. This foundational step will set the stage for more complex interactions in future lessons. By understanding how to communicate with DeepSeek, you'll be equipped to harness its full potential in creating a personal tutor that can adapt to individual learning needs.

Setting Up Your Environment

Before we can send a query to DeepSeek, we need to set up our development environment. This involves installing the necessary tools and libraries. For this course, you will need the guzzlehttp/guzzle library, which allows us to interact with DeepSeek's API through HTTP requests. To install this library, you can use Composer, a dependency manager for PHP. Run the following command in your terminal: Shell composer require guzzlehttp/guzzle You will be using a platform where this library is pre-installed, so you can focus on writing and running your code without worrying about installation.

Setting the DeepSeek API Key as an Environment Variable

In this course, you'll be using a coding environment where we've already set up everything you need to start working with DeepSeek models. This means you don't need to worry about setting up an API key or configuring environment variables — it's all taken care of for you. However, it's still useful to understand how this process works in case you want to set it up on your own computer in the future. To work with DeepSeek models outside of a pre-configured environment, you need to obtain an API key from their service. This API key is essential for accessing DeepSeek's services and making requests to their API. To keep your API key secure, you can set environment variables in your system or hosting environment. These can be accessed in PHP using the getenv() function. Here's how you might set up environment variables: On Linux/Mac, you can set environment variables in your terminal: Shell export OPENAI_API_KEY=your_deepseek_api_key_here export OPENAI_BASE_URL=https://api.deepseek.com export OPENAI_API_KEY=your_deepseek_api_key_here export OPENAI_BASE_URL=https://api.deepseek.com On Windows, you can use the command: set OPENAI_API_KEY=your_deepseek_api_key_here set OPENAI_BASE_URL=https://api.deepseek.com set OPENAI_API_KEY=your_deepseek_api_key_here set OPENAI_BASE_URL=https://api.deepseek.com For web servers like Apache, you can set environment variables in your configuration files or through hosting control panels.

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Shell

export OPENAI_API_KEY=your_deepseek_api_key_here
export OPENAI_BASE_URL=https://api.deepseek.com

set OPENAI_API_KEY=your_deepseek_api_key_here
set OPENAI_BASE_URL=https://api.deepseek.com

PHP

<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use GuzzleHttp\Client;

// Initialize the HTTP client
$client = new Client([
    'base_uri' => getenv('OPENAI_BASE_URL'),
    'headers' => [
        'Authorization' => 'Bearer ' . getenv('OPENAI_API_KEY'),
        'Content-Type' => 'application/json',
    ]
]);

<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use GuzzleHttp\Client;

// Initialize the HTTP client
$client = new Client([
    'base_uri' => getenv('OPENAI_BASE_URL'),
    'headers' => [
        'Authorization' => 'Bearer ' . getenv('OPENAI_API_KEY'),
        'Content-Type' => 'application/json',
    ]
]);

PHP

// Define a simple query to test the AI's capabilities
$prompt = "Can you tell me an engineering joke?";

// Create a tutoring session query request to get the AI's explanation
$response = $client->post('/v1/chat/completions', [
    'json' => [
        'model' => 'deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3',
        'messages' => [
            ['role' => 'user', 'content' => $prompt]
        ]
    ]
]);

PHP

// Extract the tutor's response from the API result
$body = $response->getBody();
$data = json_decode($body, true);
$reply = trim($data['choices'][0]['message']['content']);

// Display the query and the tutor's explanation
echo "Query: " . $prompt . "\n";
echo "Answer: " . $reply . "\n";

text

Query: Can you tell me an engineering joke?
Answer: Why don't engineers use self-driving cars? They don't trust anything they didn't over-engineer themselves!

PHP

<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use GuzzleHttp\Client;

// Initialize the HTTP client
$client = new Client([
    'base_uri' => getenv('OPENAI_BASE_URL'),
    'headers' => [
        'Authorization' => 'Bearer ' . getenv('OPENAI_API_KEY'),
        'Content-Type' => 'application/json',
    ]
]);

// Define a simple query to test the AI's capabilities
$prompt = "Can you tell me an engineering joke?";

// Create a tutoring session query request to get the AI's explanation
$response = $client->post('/v1/chat/completions', [
    'json' => [
        'model' => 'deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3',
        'messages' => [
            ['role' => 'user', 'content' => $prompt]
        ]
    ]
]);

// Extract the tutor's response from the API result
$body = $response->getBody();
$data = json_decode($body, true);
$reply = trim($data['choices'][0]['message']['content']);

// Display the query and the tutor's explanation
echo "Query: " . $prompt . "\n";
echo "Answer: " . $reply . "\n";

PHP

<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use GuzzleHttp\Client;

// Initialize the HTTP client
$client = new Client([
    'base_uri' => getenv('OPENAI_BASE_URL'),
    'headers' => [
        'Authorization' => 'Bearer ' . getenv('OPENAI_API_KEY'),
        'Content-Type' => 'application/json',
    ]
]);

PHP

// Define a simple query to test the AI's capabilities
$prompt = "Can you tell me an engineering joke?";

// Create a tutoring session query request to get the AI's explanation
$response = $client->post('/v1/chat/completions', [
    'json' => [
        'model' => 'deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3',
        'messages' => [
            ['role' => 'user', 'content' => $prompt]
        ]
    ]
]);

PHP

// Extract the tutor's response from the API result
$body = $response->getBody();
$data = json_decode($body, true);
$reply = trim($data['choices'][0]['message']['content']);

// Display the query and the tutor's explanation
echo "Query: " . $prompt . "\n";
echo "Answer: " . $reply . "\n";

text

Query: Can you tell me an engineering joke?
Answer: Why don't engineers use self-driving cars? They don't trust anything they didn't over-engineer themselves!

PHP

<?php
require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use GuzzleHttp\Client;

// Initialize the HTTP client
$client = new Client([
    'base_uri' => getenv('OPENAI_BASE_URL'),
    'headers' => [
        'Authorization' => 'Bearer ' . getenv('OPENAI_API_KEY'),
        'Content-Type' => 'application/json',
    ]
]);

// Define a simple query to test the AI's capabilities
$prompt = "Can you tell me an engineering joke?";

// Create a tutoring session query request to get the AI's explanation
$response = $client->post('/v1/chat/completions', [
    'json' => [
        'model' => 'deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3',
        'messages' => [
            ['role' => 'user', 'content' => $prompt]
        ]
    ]
]);

// Extract the tutor's response from the API result
$body = $response->getBody();
$data = json_decode($body, true);
$reply = trim($data['choices'][0]['message']['content']);

// Display the query and the tutor's explanation
echo "Query: " . $prompt . "\n";
echo "Answer: " . $reply . "\n";

Sending a Simple Query to DeepSeek

Setting Up Your Environment

Setting the DeepSeek API Key as an Environment Variable

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Initializing the OpenAI Client for DeepSeek

Sending Your First Query to DeepSeek

Extracting and Displaying the AI's Reply

Example: Full Code Implementation

Summary and Next Steps