Files
lancedb/docs
Brendan Clement 53c2f0b782 docs: correct table and namespace claims the runtime audit contradicted
- Python's table_exists was said to work on namespace connections; on
  one from connect_namespace("dir" or "rest") it fails with an
  AttributeError. The page now shows the supported checks: open the
  table and handle the error each connection raises, or read every page
  of a listing.
- Dropping a missing table was said to raise by default. A local
  database raises; a deployment may report success, depending on its
  catalog, and its Python connection takes no ignore_missing.
- A deployment's catalog may refuse cloning altogether; where cloning
  works, it is shallow.
- A dropped column was called unrecoverable. Restoring a version from
  before the drop brings it back until cleanup prunes that version.
- The namespace page stored data in a `data/` directory that does not
  exist, presented a recommended character set as enforced, and its
  Python listing comments showed lists where the calls return response
  objects. Its namespace examples now run as tests.
- The storage tip offered the table's reported options as the effective
  ones; they omit what the table inherits from its connection.
2026-10-09 13:31:48 -07:00
..
2026-09-09 15:33:04 +08:00

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 examples depend on @lancedb/lancedb at file:../dist, so the package must be built before running the tests. This uses pnpm; see the Typescript contributing guide for the toolchain setup.

pushd nodejs
pnpm install
pnpm build
popd

Then you can run the examples by going to the nodejs/examples directory, which is a separate pnpm package with its own lockfile:

pushd nodejs/examples
pnpm install
pnpm 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
# `pnpm docs` would invoke pnpm's built-in `docs` command, not the script.
pnpm run docs
popd