What is the correct method to display a streamed response? #369

KenLuca · 2024-04-03T18:36:45Z

KenLuca
Apr 3, 2024

I am trying to created a streamed response but I am struggling with the documentation and a lack of examples on the web. Nothing I do seems to work, it always waits for the API to complete before displaying the response (rather than streaming the chunks).

I would be grateful if anyone can provide some guidance on implementing a streamed response using the code below. Any pointers would be appreciated.

<?php
require_once 'vendor/autoload.php';
use OpenAI\Client;

if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {
    $apiKey = getenv('OPENAI_API_KEY');
    $client = OpenAI::client($apiKey);

    $prompt = $_POST["prompt"];

    $stream = $client->chat()->createStreamed([
        'model' => 'gpt-3.5-turbo',
        'messages' => [
            ['role' => 'user', 'content' => $prompt],
        ],
    ]);
}
?>

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>OpenAI Article Generator</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>OpenAI Article Generator</h1>

    <form method="post">
        <label for="prompt">Enter your prompt:</label><br>
        <textarea id="prompt" name="prompt" rows="4" cols="50"></textarea><br> //e.g. write a blog post about black holes
        <input type="submit" value="Generate Article">
    </form>

    <?php
    if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {
        echo "<h2>Generated Article:</h2>";
        
        // Enable output buffering
        ob_start();

        foreach ($stream as $chunk) {
            $content = $chunk->choices[0]->delta->content ?? '';
            echo $content;
            
            // Flush the output buffer
            ob_flush();
            flush();
            usleep(50000); // Add a small delay to allow the browser to catch up
        }

        // Clean up the output buffer
        ob_end_flush();
    }
    ?>
</body>
</html>

advanced03 · 2025-11-24T10:30:45Z

advanced03
Nov 24, 2025

Did you manage to figure it out? Struggling with the same problem here, and 0 examples online.

3 replies

KenLuca Nov 24, 2025
Author

I did, but honestly couldn't tell you how as it was such a long time ago now and I don't have access to the codebase.

I used Claude to get it to work - good luck with it 👍

advanced03 Nov 24, 2025

Hahaha yeah that's looking like the only solution here.

No worries I'll try to figure it out on my own.

mavrosxristoforos Nov 24, 2025

I don't know if this is going to be any help to you, because I use other endpoints (Assistants and Thread Runs which are now deprecated) and Ajax and server-side events instead of printing everything in a single script, but here's what worked for me:

header("X-Accel-Buffering: no");
header('Content-Type: text/event-stream');
header('Cache-Control: no-cache');
header("Connection: keep-alive");

$stream = $this->client->threads()->createAndRunStreamed(array_merge($common_run_options, [
  'thread' => [
    'messages' => $messages,
  ],
]));

do {
  foreach($stream as $api_response) {
    switch($api_response->event) {
      case 'thread.run.created':
      case 'thread.run.queued':
      case 'thread.run.cancelling':
        $run = $api_response->response;
        break;
      case 'thread.run.completed':
        $run = $api_response->response;
        echo "id: prefix_" . time() . uniqid() . PHP_EOL;
        echo "data: " . json_encode($api_response) . PHP_EOL . PHP_EOL;
        while (ob_get_level() > 0) {
          ob_end_flush();
        }
        flush();
        break;
      case 'thread.run.expired':
      case 'thread.run.cancelled':
      case 'thread.run.failed':
        $run = $api_response->response;
        $caller->addResponse($api_response);
        break 3;
      case 'thread.message.delta':
      case 'thread.message.completed':
        echo "id: prefix_" . time() . uniqid() . PHP_EOL;
        echo "data: " . json_encode($api_response) . PHP_EOL . PHP_EOL;
        while (ob_get_level() > 0) {
          ob_end_flush();
        }
        flush();
        break;
    }
  }
} while ($run->status != "completed");

This is a bare-bone version of my code. Hope it helps.

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