How to integrate ChatGPT into mobile app development?
AI programmers or AI-powered development tools are on the rise, given the fact that they come built-in with complex evaluation and analytical algorithms, automation routines, ML models, and many other features. These combined facilitate the software development life cycle, allowing developers to reduce time consumed in conducting manual tasks, lower the risks and error count in the development roadmap, and decrease the overall time to market. Most companies offering mobile app development services have shown eagerness to integrate these AI-powered programming tools to drive innovation, excellence, and flawless deliveries.
Out of the innumerable AI tools available in use, it is ChatGPT that has taken the entire market by storm. With its annual revenue estimated at $1600 million by 2023, the tool has proven to be every developer’s most trusted and efficient companion. From suggesting features for mobile apps to generating code snippets based on human prompt inputs, it works wonders and streamlines the ideation, workflow orchestration, designing, and development phases of SDLC.
What is ChatGPT in terms of a development tool?
ChatGPT is the brainchild of OpenAI, first launched in the market on November 30, 2022. Powered by AI models and complex algorithms, the tool takes and evaluates human prompts and generates appropriate responses, catering to user demands. Whether you ask for the latest features trending in the mobile app development market or request help to find a bug source in a code snippet, this AI programmer has got it all.
It works through a Generative Pre-trained Transformer, which is nothing but a large language model based on a neural network. This model takes datasets as the input and performs a thorough scanning and analysis to find hidden trends and patterns. Based on the evaluated trends, the tool generates responses as per the training models. The training model allows the transformer to understand what’s being asked and generate human-like responses for user understanding.
How can ChatGPT help mobile app developers?
Understanding the ways ChatGPT empowers developers is crucial before integrating it into the development roadmap. Even though the AI tool opens a host of new opportunities for professionals, it has certain limitations to its operational and functional scopes. Considering this, we have listed a few ways every mobile app developer can leverage the tool to streamline the software development life cycle.
Generating complex codes
One of the salient features of ChatGPT is code snippet generation. It takes the human prompt as the input, which can be a simple statement like “I want a class with its interface implementation that will contain public setters and getters for abstract process services and delegates.” Based on the request input, the trained transformer model scraps the data fed into its memory at the time of development and generates a response. The code snippet generated helps developers to get an idea about the public interface and class declaring and implementing all the setters and getters needed to write the process service or delegate file. On top of this, the tool doesn’t have any constraints for the programming language, meaning developers can seek help from different languages like Java, React, Python, SQL, and many more.
Creating code documentations
Another feature of ChatGPT that developers can leverage during SDLC is documentation. It can be integrated with the IDEs to scan the codes and luate all the statements and file outlines for documentation. The robotic algorithm makes no mistakes in code evaluation, ensuring accurate and precise documentation that explains the purpose of every variable declaration, the method used, calling logic, if and else conditions, loops, constructor implementation, and so on. Thanks to the integrated natural language processing algorithms and models, ChatGPT ensures to transcribe the code snippets with maximum accuracy and precision. This not only reduces the time taken to create the documents manually but also allows developers to focus on critical points of the projects.
Also Read : Building a Simple Chat Application Using Flutter and ChatGPT Davinci Model
Test case creations
Testing is often integrated as a crucial part of mobile app development. In fact, every firm ensures to hire dedicated React native developers or professional experts in other programming languages possessing testing skills. This is because every developer is supposed to perform first-hand or unit testing on the code pieces developed and then release the changes in the deployment server. In several projects, developers also need to conduct server and load testing along with PT or performance testing on the code changes. To do so, creating proper test cases is imperative, and this is where ChatGPT comes into play. It generates different types of test cases based on the testing criteria given as the input prompt. Furthermore, it also creates testing results once the codes are entered, allowing developers to compare the same with expected results and determine if the code is working accurately or if there are discrepancies.
Generating code alternatives
Most times, developers can’t execute complex codes or evaluate the legacy codes and perform in-depth analysis. Using an AI programmer like ChatGPT seems to be a rational approach to generating alternate codes with accuracy and negligible compilation errors. For instance, let’s assume you are working on a legacy system and have been assigned the task of modifying the codes and making them lightweight and scalable. This will require analyzing the entire code files and writing them from scratch with fewer methods, reduced code complexity, and removing obsolete code pieces. You can leverage ChatGPT to generate alternate code snippets for the existing legacy code and execute the same in the IDE for further analysis.
Tracking bugs and errors
When writing codes, making mistakes is unavoidable. Although most development tools highlight the compilation-time errors on the go, they cannot determine the runtime errors. For instance, let’s say you are using Eclipse IDE to develop a project in Java language. When you write the code, Eclipse’s built-in compiler will highlight compilation errors like method declaration without any implementation, incorrect array or list declaration, unimplemented methods, and so on. However, you won’t be able to know if there will be any null pointer exception or datatype casting issue in the new code.
Similarly, you might miss giving null pointer checks in if conditions. These problems can be avoided with the help of ChatGPT’s AI programmer. Once you provide the code snippet as the input, the AI tool will run a thorough analysis and display the bugs or errors in your code instantly.
Step-by-step integration of ChatGPT into mobile apps?
Now that we have established the key benefits of integrating ChatGPT in a mobile app development project, it’s time you start working on laying down the integration strategy for further implementation. Without a proper strategic roadmap in hand, you won’t be able to leverage this AI programmer to the fullest. Furthermore, generating the expected results and tackling unavoidable circumstances will become perilous in the long run.
Considering this, we have illustrated the steps to integrate ChatGPT in a mobile app development project chronologically.
Step 1: Acquiring access to OpenAI platform
The first step is to acquire access to the OpenAI platform that is the base of ChatGPT. To do so, you need to visit the official platform and create a user account. Instructions are clearly stated on the website that you can follow further to complete account creation and generate the necessary API keys. These keys are nothing but code snippets required to authenticate a software integration or a user trying to access the integrated mobile app with ChatGPT.
Step 2: Setting the development platform
The development platform or the IDE should be configured to make API requests to the ChatGPT transformer. Since there are different programming languages in use for mobile app development, ensure OpenAI has the built-in libraries to simplify the integration process. Furthermore, you should provide the IDE being used that is compatible with OpenAI for further API interaction and service-based calls.
Step 3: Make the API requests
You can leverage the OpenAI platform to make the API requests that will be further sent to ChatGPT. Based on these prompts, the expected responses will be generated. For instance, if you give an input prompt like “Kindly check the bugs in this code snippet for null pointers,” OpenAI will make an API request for the same and forward it to ChatGPT’s transformer. The AI Programmer will then evaluate the code snippet and generate the results based on the findings. If there are any possible areas in the code where a null pointer exception might occur, the AI programmer will highlight the same for you.
Step 4: Handling API responses through the app
The next step is to integrate business and calculation logic with the codebase deployed for the mobile app. These logics must be developed in a way that the API responses received from ChatGPT can be handled and evaluated appropriately. Based on the logic, the final results will be displayed on the UI or the workflows will be processed as per the desired actions.
Step 5: Increasing conversation with historical data
If you give a sudden prompt to ChatGPT, the AI bot won’t be able to understand any historical conversation and data. As a result, the evaluation results might not align perfectly with the expectations. To avoid such discrepancies, professionals must design prompts for API requests that include historical data or chat. This will help ChatGPT to understand what’s going on and accordingly formulate the results.
Step 6: Performing a fine-tune
You cannot rely on the basic tuning of ChatGPT since it is generalized and won’t be able to provide the expected results when exposed to customized prompts or input datasets. This is why developers should focus on fine-tuning the GPT-3 transformer, which is the primary driver of ChatGPT. The fine-tuning process will help you make minute alterations to the transformer’s function, ensuring ChatGPT evaluates the customized datasets correctly. This way, the generated results will be at par with the expectations, and you can easily enhance the user experience of the developed mobile application.
Step 7: Implementing appropriate security layers
It is imperative to implement and integrate appropriate security protocols as ChatGPT is public software accessed by millions of users globally. That’s why exposing your user data will compromise safety and security. So, once fine-tuning is completed, you should work on integrating proper encryption algorithms and security protocols so that the user data is abstracted and cannot be used for any malicious activity.
Step 8: Conducting a thorough test
Lastly, you need to conduct thorough testing to ensure ChatGPT is performing as expected based on the input prompts or user datasets. Testing schedules should include diverse scenarios so that you can understand if the responses are accurate or if discrepancies exist at multiple levels. You can scale the API models and fine tuning protocols based on the testing results to provide a seamless user experience across all touchpoints.
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Conclusion
In this article, we have talked about the benefits developers can experience with ChatGPT once it is integrated into the software development life cycle. From creating code documents automatically to getting an idea about trending mobile app features, developers will be able to leverage this AI programmer to reduce the manual efforts in SDLC. Furthermore, following the proper integration roadmap will help developers integrate ChatGPT into the mobile app and enhance the overall user experience.