BREAKING CHANGE: When passing multiple where clauses to a query, they
now stack instead of replacing the previous filter.
Previously, calling `where`/`only_if` more than once on a query silently
replaced the previous filter, so only the last filter was applied. This
was
surprising and could return rows that an earlier filter should have
excluded.
This implements the alternative suggested in
https://github.com/lancedb/lancedb/pull/3514#issuecomment-4664901580:
instead of
rejecting a second filter, repeated filters are combined with a logical
AND
(`(previous) AND (new)`).
The combination happens in the Rust core (`QueryBase::only_if` and
`only_if_expr`), so it applies to all SDKs at once (Rust, Python async,
and
TypeScript). The Python sync query builder keeps its own filter state,
so it
combines filters in the binding layer as well.
SQL string and expression filters are combined within their own
representation.
When the two representations are mixed, the expression is lowered to SQL
(via
`expr_to_sql_string`) and the filters are combined as SQL strings, so
chaining
`where` works regardless of which form each filter takes.
Fixes#2649
## Tests
- Rust: `cargo test --features remote -p lancedb --lib query`
- Python: `uv run --extra tests pytest python/tests/test_query.py`
- TypeScript: `pnpm test __test__/query.test.ts`
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Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
