Files
lancedb/docs
Jonathan M HsiehandClaude Opus 5 7b29fb2f51 feat(secrets): named Secrets and EnvVarSecret bindings
Adds the client half of database-scoped named Secrets: a Secret is a name and
an opaque value stored by the service, and a Function binds one to the
environment variable its library already reads.

- `db.create_secret` / `alter_secret` / `list_secrets` / `describe_secret` /
  `drop_secret` on sync, async and remote connections, with the pyo3 binding
  and the Rust client behind them. There is no read API by construction rather
  than by policy: no code path returns a stored credential, and
  `describe_secret` answers with metadata only.
- `EnvVarSecret(secret=..., env_variable=...)` pairs a Secret with the variable
  it arrives in. It is a pure local constructor -- it contacts no server, so it
  cannot fail on a Secret that does not exist -- and it exists so a bare string
  in that position, which would be a credential, is a TypeError rather than a
  plausible-looking mistake that reads identically in a diff.
- `create_function(..., secrets=[...])` carries the bindings as
  `secret_bindings`, a map from variable name to Secret name. The value never
  travels: it is resolved by the service when the Function runs, which is what
  lets a rotation reach columns pinned to an older FunctionVersion.

The UDF body is unchanged and stays portable -- it reads `OPENAI_API_KEY` the
way it always did, and the binding is what puts a value there.

Squashed: the original three commits were a first design plus a rewrite of it,
so their sequence describes an interface that no longer exists.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01XE1UwYKsgbb3USBfkqCE6v
2026-09-09 00:12:57 +00:00
..

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