How to Use the Claude AI API in PHP: A Comprehensive Guide

The Claude AI API allows you to integrate Claude’s advanced AI capabilities into your PHP applications. This guide will provide a step-by-step walkthrough of using the Claude API in PHP, covering topics like:

• Setting up API access
• Sending text requests
• Receiving text responses
• Using streams for long-form responses
• Implementing advanced features like chat and embeddings
• Best practices for working with the API
• Troubleshooting issues

By the end, you’ll have a complete understanding of how to leverage the power of Claude AI within your PHP code.

Prerequisites

Before using the Claude AI API in PHP, you’ll need:

Claude API Key

• Sign up for a Claude account at claude.ai
• Get an API key from your Claude account settings
• Take note of your API endpoint

PHP Environment

• PHP 7.1 or higher
• curl extension installed and enabled
• Optional: Composer to install the Claude PHP client library

Test Endpoint

Use the test endpoint https://api.claude.ai/test for initial integration.

Setup: Install Claude PHP Client Library

The easiest way to work with the Claude API is to use the official PHP client library.

Install via Composer:

composer require claude-ai/claude-php

Now the Claude\Client class can be used to simplify requests.

Creating the Client

Start by creating a Claude\Client instance with your API key:

$client = new Claude\Client('YOUR_API_KEY'); 

Use the actual API endpoint rather than test for production.

Sending Text Requests

The primary way of interacting with Claude is by sending text requests.

Simple Requests

Send text in a request and get back text responses using ask():

$response = $client->ask("What is Claude's capabilities?");

echo $response; 

That handles passing your API key, encodes the request, streams the response, and returns just the text content.

Advanced Options

For more control, pass request options to configure features like response length, emotion, creativity and more:

$options = [
    'length' => 1000,
    'temperature' => 0.7,
    'top_p' => 0.3 
];

$response = $client->ask("Write a poem", $options);

See the full docs for available options.

Receiving Responses

Claude returns text responses directly. But for long-form responses, you’ll want to stream parts incrementally.

Stream Responses

Use the stream() method to incrementally stream responses, handling text chunks under the hood:

```php
foreach ($client->stream("Write a short story") as $response) {
// Process each text chunk
}

Set a `stream_separator` option to customize the delimiter between chunks:

$client->stream("…", ['stream_separator' => '<| response |>'])

Implementing Chat

Claude supports conversational chat flows out of the box.

Chat Session

Start a chat session to preserve state and history:

$session_id = $client->startChatSession();

Pass the session_id with each request to maintain context:

$response = $client->ask("Hello!", [], $session_id);

Finally, end the session when done:

$client->endChatSession($session_id);

Chat History

Include past chat history to keep the conversation coherent:

$history = [
   ["human" => "Hello!", "ai" => "Hi there!"]   
];

$response = $client->ask("How are you?", [], $session_id, $history);

Advanced Features

Take advantage of Claude’s most advanced capabilities from PHP.

Embeddings

Represent concepts as embeddings vectors for semantic analysis:

$embedding = $client->embedContent("Saturn V Rocket");

$response = $client->ask("What is the payload?", [], $session_id, [], $embedding);

Content Filtering

Leverage Claude’s industry-leading content filtering for safety, bias and more:

$client->setContentFiltering(true);

See docs for full details on filtering options.

Async Requests

Make non-blocking async requests to queue background jobs:

$job = $client->askAsync("Write a blog post"); 

// Check job status 
$status = $job->status();

// Get result when ready 
$response = $job->getResponse();

Best Practices

Follow these best practices when using the Claude API in PHP:

• Validate all user input to avoid injection attacks
• Handle exceptions and errors gracefully
• Check response lengths before displaying to users
• Rate limit requests to avoid throttling
• Monitor usage to optimize plans and costs
• Use async for long-running or batch jobs

Troubleshooting

If you run into issues using the API, here are some things to check:

• Confirm your API key is valid
• Check request size limitshaven’t been exceeded
• Handle and inspect exceptions from the client
• Ensure your PHP version and extensions meet requirements
• Try both test and production endpoints to isolate issues
• Check Claude status page at status.claude.ai for ongoing issues

And you can always reach out to Claude’s customer support who are happy to help troubleshoot any problems!

Conclusion

That covers the full set of capabilities for using Claude AI within your PHP applications. From simple text queries to advanced features like embeddings and content filtering, the Claude API provides flexible access to enterprise-grade AI.

As one of the most powerful AI platforms available today with strengths in generating long-form content, keeping context in conversations, and representing semantic concepts as vectors, Claude is an ideal solution for enhancing PHP products and services with artificial intelligence.

By following best practices around input validation, error handling, usage monitoring and more – and leveraging capabilities like streams, chat and async – you can create the most smooth, performant and safe integrations between Claude AI and your PHP code.

I hope this comprehensive guide has provided all the knowledge needed to feel confident getting started! Let me know if you have any other questions.

FAQs