Files
Wyatt Alt 928c3dde2d feat: computed columns on remote tables (#3941)
LanceDB Cloud and Enterprise support computed columns through the REST
API,
so declaration dispatches per backend: local tables plan the expression
themselves, remote ones send {name, computed} entries for the server to
plan. A remote refresh is the server's backfill job --
refresh_column_async
submits it and returns a handle whose successful wait establishes a
read-freshness baseline on the submitting handle, unless a checkout has
pinned the handle by the time the job completes; the blocking form
refuses
rather than invent a fill count the server does not report.

Declaration entries are built from the namespace client's
AddColumnsEntry
model (lance-namespace 0.11.0, via the lance beta.13 pin), so the
payload
shape is compile-checked against the published contract.

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LanceDB Documentation

LanceDB docs are available at docs.lancedb.com.

The SDK docs are built and deployed automatically by Github Actions whenever a commit is pushed to the main branch. So it is possible for the docs to show unreleased features.

Building the docs

Setup

  1. Install LanceDB Python. See setup in Python contributing guide. Run make develop to install the Python package.
  2. Install documentation dependencies. From LanceDB repo root: pip install -r docs/requirements.txt

Preview the docs

cd docs
mkdocs serve

If you want to just generate the HTML files:

PYTHONPATH=. mkdocs build -f docs/mkdocs.yml

If successful, you should see a docs/site directory that you can verify locally.

Adding examples

To make sure examples are correct, we put examples in test files so they can be run as part of our test suites.

You can see the tests are at:

  • Python: python/python/tests/docs
  • Typescript: nodejs/examples/

Checking python examples

cd python
pytest -vv python/tests/docs

Checking typescript examples

The @lancedb/lancedb package must be built before running the tests:

pushd nodejs
npm ci
npm run build
popd

Then you can run the examples by going to the nodejs/examples directory and running the tests like a normal npm package:

pushd nodejs/examples
npm ci
npm test
popd

API documentation

Python

The Python API documentation is organized based on the file docs/src/python/python.md. We manually add entries there so we can control the organization of the reference page. However, this means any new types must be manually added to the file. No additional steps are needed to generate the API documentation.

Typescript

The typescript API documentation is generated from the typescript source code using typedoc.

When new APIs are added, you must manually re-run the typedoc command to update the API documentation. The new files should be checked into the repository.

pushd nodejs
npm run docs
popd