What is the purpose of the new streaming parameter in API requests?

The Streaming parameter is a recent addition that lets you receive the response in a "streaming" manner—instead of waiting for the entire result to be computed and returned in one payload, you get parts of the output incrementally as they’re generated.

Key Points

• Incremental Delivery: When enabled, results are sent as a series of tokens or chunks. This is especially useful for long completions or interactive applications, as you can start processing and displaying portions of the answer immediately.

• Improved Responsiveness: It can make applications feel faster and more responsive, especially in interfaces where waiting for a complete result might introduce noticeable delays.

• Usage: Typically, the parameter is a boolean option (stream: true or similar), which you set in your API request.

• Development Considerations:

  • Error Handling: Since the output is segmented, you may need to handle partial responses and ensure that your application correctly assembles or processes the combined result.
  • Network Behavior: The streaming responses might behave differently in terms of network load and latency, so it’s important to test under your specific conditions.

Overall, if you’re working with real-time interactions or long outputs, enabling streaming can provide a smoother experience by progressively delivering results as they are computed.