From 636b8b5bbd8f2cfbe055e755bc9bbab6acd9284f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Weston Pace <weston.pace@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2026 05:44:08 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] fix: allow permutation reader to be used with remote tables
 (#3019)

There were two issues:

1. The python code needs to get access to the underlying rust table to
setup the permutation reader and the attributes involved in this differ
between the python local table and remote table objects.
~~2. The remote table was sending projection dictionaries as arrays of
tuples and (on LanceDB cloud at least) it does not appear this is how
rest servers are setup to receive them.~~ (this is now fixed as #3023)

~~Leaving as draft as this is built on
https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/pull/3016~~
---
 python/src/permutation.rs | 21 +++++++++++++++++----
 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/python/src/permutation.rs b/python/src/permutation.rs
index 192cf70f5..f76298891 100644
--- a/python/src/permutation.rs
+++ b/python/src/permutation.rs
@@ -239,6 +239,21 @@ impl PyPermutationReader {
             .collect::<PyResult<Vec<_>>>()?;
         Ok(Select::dynamic(&selection))
     }
+
+    fn table_from_py<'a>(table: Bound<'a, PyAny>) -> PyResult<Bound<'a, Table>> {
+        if table.hasattr("_inner")? {
+            Ok(table.getattr("_inner")?.downcast_into::<Table>()?)
+        } else if table.hasattr("_table")? {
+            Ok(table
+                .getattr("_table")?
+                .getattr("_inner")?
+                .downcast_into::<Table>()?)
+        } else {
+            Err(PyRuntimeError::new_err(
+                "Provided table does not appear to be a Table or RemoteTable instance",
+            ))
+        }
+    }
 }
 
 #[pymethods]
@@ -250,10 +265,8 @@ impl PyPermutationReader {
         permutation_table: Option<Bound<'py, PyAny>>,
         split: u64,
     ) -> PyResult<Bound<'py, PyAny>> {
-        let base_table = base_table.getattr("_inner")?.downcast_into::<Table>()?;
-        let permutation_table = permutation_table
-            .map(|p| PyResult::Ok(p.getattr("_inner")?.downcast_into::<Table>()?))
-            .transpose()?;
+        let base_table = Self::table_from_py(base_table)?;
+        let permutation_table = permutation_table.map(Self::table_from_py).transpose()?;
 
         let base_table = base_table.borrow().inner_ref()?.base_table().clone();
         let permutation_table = permutation_table