Bug: Unable to use Ollama and chat app without also installing/configuring openai package

[mconflitti-pbc]

Maybe I missed this in the docs somewhere, but I don't believe it is explicitly called out that you need to install the various providers' deps yourself.

This could be solved with updated docs and/or installation extras to enable me to do: uv add chatlas[all] or uv add chatlas[openai,shiny].

Regardless, I think the logic around imports for these providers may be broken since I would not expect my simple code to break due to needing openai related deps when trying to chat with ollama. I see that you are using the OpenAI chat completion object which is why this would be triggered. Could look into using ollama's instead: https://github.com/ollama/ollama-python or providing a better error messaging notifying the user what went wrong during import.

The env var issue can be fixed by doing a quick check if that key is not set yet.

from chatlas import ChatOllama
import os

os.environ['OPENAI_API_KEY'] = "abc123" # <-- necessary to fix error shown below

chat = ChatOllama(model="llama3.2")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    chat.app()

>>> %run "/Users/mconflitti/Documents/repos/test-shiny-app/app.py"
ImportError: `ChatOpenAI()` requires the `openai` package. Install it with `pip install openai`.
File [~/Documents/repos/test-shiny-app/.venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/chatlas/_openai.py:195](vscode-file://vscode-app/Applications/Positron.app/Contents/Resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-sandbox/workbench/workbench.html#), in OpenAIProvider.__init__(self, api_key, model, base_url, seed, kwargs)
    194 try:
--> 195     from openai import AsyncOpenAI, OpenAI
    196 except ImportError:
Show Traceback
>>> %run "/Users/mconflitti/Documents/repos/test-shiny-app/app.py"
OpenAIError: The api_key client option must be set either by passing api_key to the client or by setting the OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable
File [~/Documents/repos/test-shiny-app/app.py:3](vscode-file://vscode-app/Applications/Positron.app/Contents/Resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-sandbox/workbench/workbench.html#)
      1 from chatlas import ChatOllama
----> 3 chat = ChatOllama(model="llama3.2")
      5 if __name__ == "__main__":
      6     chat.app()
Show Traceback
>>> %run "/Users/mconflitti/Documents/repos/test-shiny-app/app.py"
ImportError: The `shiny` package is required for the `browser` method. Install it with `pip install shiny`.
File [~/Documents/repos/test-shiny-app/.venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/chatlas/_chat.py:220](vscode-file://vscode-app/Applications/Positron.app/Contents/Resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-sandbox/workbench/workbench.html#), in Chat.app(self, stream, port, launch_browser, bg_thread, kwargs)
    219 try:
--> 220     from shiny import App, run_app, ui
    221 except ImportError:
Hide Traceback
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'shiny'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

ImportError                               Traceback (most recent call last)
File [~/Documents/repos/test-shiny-app/app.py:9](vscode-file://vscode-app/Applications/Positron.app/Contents/Resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-sandbox/workbench/workbench.html#)
      6 chat = ChatOllama(model="llama3.2")
      8 if __name__ == "__main__":
----> 9     chat.app()

File [~/Documents/repos/test-shiny-app/.venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages/chatlas/_chat.py:222](vscode-file://vscode-app/Applications/Positron.app/Contents/Resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-sandbox/workbench/workbench.html#), in Chat.app(self, stream, port, launch_browser, bg_thread, kwargs)
    220     from shiny import App, run_app, ui
    221 except ImportError:
--> 222     raise ImportError(
    223         "The `shiny` package is required for the `browser` method. "
    224         "Install it with `pip install shiny`."
    225     )
    227 app_ui = ui.page_fillable(
    228     ui.chat_ui("chat"),
    229     fillable_mobile=True,
    230 )
    232 def server(input):  # noqa: A002
>>> %run "/Users/mconflitti/Documents/repos/test-shiny-app/app.py"
INFO:     Started server process [82420]
INFO:     Waiting for application startup.
INFO:     Application startup complete.
INFO:     Uvicorn running on [http://127.0.0.1:47139](vscode-file://vscode-app/Applications/Positron.app/Contents/Resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-sandbox/workbench/workbench.html#) (Press CTRL+C to quit)

[cpsievert]

It was an intentional decision to build on ollama's OpenAI compatibility rather than the ollama Python package so that there'd less provider implementations to maintain. That said, I'd be open to switching if there's advantage (other than a different Python dependency)

Also, you're right that ChatOllama is missing a callout to install openai, and it shouldn't require OPENAI_API_KEY to be set. Both those things are now fixed (by f8564d3)

As for the extras thing, it's something I haven't given much thought to yet, but FWIW, been using uv add chatlas[dev] as basically the equivalent of uv add chatlas[all]

[mconflitti-pbc]

Nice! I think your comment says to install the ollama package instead of the openai package though.

Wondering if it would be useful to abstract this away a bit from the user.

uv add chatlas[ollama, interactive] could be defined to install openai and shiny and then if those underlying implementations do change at some point, the dev doesnt care from a code perspective nor dep perspective.

Just a thought! Didn't see the dev extra documented but makes sense it has been useful internally!

[cpsievert]

🤦 , thanks for catching that