---
title: "AzureOpenAITextEmbedder"
id: azureopenaitextembedder
slug: "/azureopenaitextembedder"
description: "When you perform embedding retrieval, you use this component to transform your query into a vector. Then, the embedding Retriever looks for similar or relevant documents."
---

# AzureOpenAITextEmbedder

When you perform embedding retrieval, you use this component to transform your query into a vector. Then, the embedding Retriever looks for similar or relevant documents.

<div className="key-value-table">

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| **Most common position in a pipeline** | Before an embedding [Retriever](../retrievers.mdx)  in a query/RAG pipeline |
| **Mandatory init variables** | `api_key`: The Azure OpenAI API key. Can be set with `AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY` env var.  <br />`azure_endpoint`: The endpoint of the model deployed on Azure. |
| **Mandatory run variables** | `text`: A string |
| **Output variables** | `embedding`:  A list of float numbers  <br /> <br />`meta`: A dictionary of metadata |
| **API reference** | [Embedders](/reference/embedders-api) |
| **GitHub link** | https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack/blob/main/haystack/components/embedders/azure_text_embedder.py |
| **Package name** | `haystack-ai` |

</div>

## Overview

`AzureOpenAITextEmbedder` transforms a string into a vector that captures its semantics using an OpenAI embedding model. It uses Azure cognitive services for text and document embedding with models deployed on Azure.

To see the list of compatible embedding models, head over to Azure [documentation](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-services/openai/concepts/models?source=recommendations). The default model for `AzureOpenAITextEmbedder` is `text-embedding-ada-002`.

Use `AzureOpenAITextEmbedder` to embed a simple string (such as a query) into a vector. For embedding lists of documents, use the [`AzureOpenAIDocumentEmbedder`](azureopenaidocumentembedder.mdx), which enriches the documents with the computed embedding, also known as vector.

To work with Azure components, you will need an Azure OpenAI API key, as well as an Azure OpenAI Endpoint. You can learn more about them in Azure [documentation](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-services/openai/reference).

The component uses `AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY` or `AZURE_OPENAI_AD_TOKEN` environment variables by default. Otherwise, you can pass `api_key` or `azure_ad_token` at initialization:

```python
client = AzureOpenAITextEmbedder(
    azure_endpoint="<Your Azure endpoint e.g. `https://your-company.azure.openai.com/>",
    api_key=Secret.from_token("<your-api-key>"),
    azure_deployment="<a model name>",
)
```

:::info
We recommend using environment variables instead of initialization parameters.
:::

## Usage

### On its own

Here is how you can use the component on its own:

```python
from haystack.components.embedders import AzureOpenAITextEmbedder

text_to_embed = "I love pizza!"

text_embedder = AzureOpenAITextEmbedder()

print(text_embedder.run(text_to_embed))

# {'embedding': [0.017020374536514282, -0.023255806416273117, ...],
# 'meta': {'model': 'text-embedding-ada-002-v2',
# 'usage': {'prompt_tokens': 4, 'total_tokens': 4}}}
```

### In a pipeline

```python
from haystack import Document
from haystack import Pipeline
from haystack.document_stores.in_memory import InMemoryDocumentStore
from haystack.components.embedders import (
    AzureOpenAITextEmbedder,
    AzureOpenAIDocumentEmbedder,
)
from haystack.components.retrievers.in_memory import InMemoryEmbeddingRetriever

document_store = InMemoryDocumentStore(embedding_similarity_function="cosine")

documents = [
    Document(content="My name is Wolfgang and I live in Berlin"),
    Document(content="I saw a black horse running"),
    Document(content="Germany has many big cities"),
]

document_embedder = AzureOpenAIDocumentEmbedder()
documents_with_embeddings = document_embedder.run(documents)["documents"]
document_store.write_documents(documents_with_embeddings)

query_pipeline = Pipeline()
query_pipeline.add_component("text_embedder", AzureOpenAITextEmbedder())
query_pipeline.add_component(
    "retriever",
    InMemoryEmbeddingRetriever(document_store=document_store),
)
query_pipeline.connect("text_embedder.embedding", "retriever.query_embedding")

query = "Who lives in Berlin?"

result = query_pipeline.run({"text_embedder": {"text": query}})

print(result["retriever"]["documents"][0])

# Document(id=..., mimetype: 'text/plain',
# text: 'My name is Wolfgang and I live in Berlin')
```
