Step-by-Step Implementation
Step 1:
After the initial setup of the project, you get a folder structure like this.
Open main.dart file from the lib folder.
Step 2:
Add the following required packages in the pubspec.yaml file just below the dependencies section which we are going to use in our app.
- http: (To communicate with API)
- chat_bubbles: (For displaying beautiful UI for individual messages)
Step 3:
Create a new file named chat_screen.dart in the lib folder.
Step 4:
Import the material file using the following statement in the newly created file.
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
Import the below files for the working of the application.
import 'package:http/http.dart' as http;
import 'package:chat_bubbles/chat_bubbles.dart';
Step 5:
Open the AndroidManifest.xml file which is available under the android/app/src/main folder. Add the following line above the <application> tag to give the app internet permission to communicate with the language model.
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
Step 6:
Create a Stateful Widget named ChatScreen to code the UI and Logic of the app. You can also use the below template to create the widget.
Dart
class ChatScreen extends StatefulWidget { const ChatScreen({super.key}); @override State<ChatScreen> createState() => _ChatScreenState();}class _ChatScreenState extends State<ChatScreen> { @override Widget build(BuildContext context) { return const Placeholder(); }} |
Create a new file named message.dart in the lib folder. Below is the Dart code for it.
Dart
class Message { bool isSender; String msg; Message(this.isSender, this.msg);} |
Step 7:
Declare the following variables inside the ChatScreenState class i.e. above the build widget for future usage.
Dart
TextEditingController controller = TextEditingController();ScrollController scrollController = ScrollController();List<Message> msgs = [];bool isTyping = false; |
Usage of the above code
- controller is used to get the text that is being typed in the chatbox present at the bottom of the screen.
- scrollController is used to scroll to the bottom of the message list when a new message appears on the screen. This is used to give a animation and better user experience which is optional.
- msgs is a list of type Message that stores all the messages sent and received in the chat session.
- isTyping is a boolean that helps to display typing… animation/text on the screen to show the user that the chatbot is typing something to the message sent by the user.
How to Create a ChatBot Application using ChatGPT API in Flutter?
A ChatBot is a computer program that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand customers’ questions and give responses to them simulating human behavior. Building our own ChatBot from scratch requires us to train the Machine Learning (ML) model with rigorous amounts of text-based data, providing it with different contexts of real-world conversations. Now we don’t need to perform that meticulous task, as OpenAI already developed ChatGPT which was trained on billions of words of textual data which made it very powerful.
In this article, we will explain the total process of building a Mobile ChatBot Application using ChatGPT API and Flutter. We will be using Flutter Framework to build the application for Android. Flutter is an open-source framework developed and supported by Google to build and deploy hybrid applications quickly.
A sample video is given below to get an idea about what we are going to do in this article.