Python Flask Web app with Azure OpenAI Integration

This guide walks you through deploying a minimalistic Flask application with Azure OpenAI's GPT integration to an Azure Web App.

Step 1. Provision GPT model in Azure OpenAI:

• In Azure OpenAI / AI Studio, deploy the required GPT-x model;
• Take note of Azire OpenAI resource's endpoint, GPT model's deployment name and the API version you plan to use.

Step 2. Prepare Azure Web App resource:

• In Azure, create a new Web app and select Python as your target language platform;
• In the Web app's Environment Variables settings, create the following variables and set them to the values collected from Step 1: AZURE_OPENAI_API_BASE, AZURE_OPENAI_API_DEPLOY and AZURE_OPENAI_API_VERSION;
• In the Web app's Environment Variables settings, create the variable SCM_DO_BUILD_DURING_DEPLOYMENT and set its value to "true";

Note: The SCM_DO_BUILD_DURING_DEPLOYMENT setting ensures that the Web app downloads required Python packages, listed in the provided requirements.txt file.

• If set up correctly, your Web App settings should look similar to this:

Step 3. Configure Authentication:

• In the Web app's Identity settings, set the status of system-assigned managed identity to ON;

Note: this demo shows how to authenticate with a managed identity. You can find implementation details for other potential options here.

• In Azure OpenAI's Access Control (IAM) settings, assign the Web app's managed identity the Cognitive Services OpenAI User role.

Step 4. Deploy Flask Web App:

• ZIP the provided app.py, requirements.txt and the content of the static and templates folders (4 files in total);
• Deploy your ZIP file with the following Azure CLI command. Ensure you use the correct Resource Group, Web App and ZIP file names:

az webapp deploy --resource-group <Web_App_RG> --name <Web_App_Name> --src-path <Source_ZIP_file>

• As we enabled "build during deployment" in Step 2, you can verify from the Web App log that it pulled the required Python packages into the target Python virtual environment:

Step 5. Web App UI:

• The home page of the Flask Web app is very minimalistic. You type your question, click the Ask button and the Web app adds a new pair of question/answers to its Web page: