lancedb-gatefixer[bot]
a4f52cd205
Fixes #4733 PyArrow expects Blob V2 storage structs when constructing a record batch and cannot infer the extension array from raw bytes. LanceDB already converts binary values during ingestion, but batch writers had no supported array constructor. Add `lancedb.schema.blob_array(payloads)` for iterables of inline bytes and nulls, using the same extension type resolver as `blob()`. The helper preserves empty blobs and null blobs and works with both pylance's type and LanceDB's fallback. Document the descriptor fields, exclusive inline/external representations, batch construction, and existing binary conversion in synchronous and asynchronous `create_table` / `add` APIs. Validation: - Reproduced the reported `ArrowTypeError` on the original code; both new regression cases fail against the original schema module. - 256 focused blob tests and schema doctests passed; one optional PyAV test skipped. - Both new regression cases also passed with PyArrow 25, with and without pylance imports. - Python package Ruff checks and formatting passed. - MkDocs build passed, with an existing unrelated `SecretReference` cross-reference warning. Repository-wide Ruff reports 48 existing errors in `docs/web-tests`. <!-- lance-gatekeeper-fix:v1 agent=20d1a296d76ff5eb914c0848428a747a generation=1 --> Co-authored-by: Gatefixer <313497061+lancedb-gatefixer[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
LanceDB Documentation
For website guides in docs/web, start with
Documentation in CONTRIBUTING.md. That
covers editing pages, generated examples, previews, availability and drafts.
This page covers the SDK reference in docs/src, built with MkDocs. Its
GitHub Actions workflow builds and deploys on
pushes to main, so it can include unreleased APIs. That is separate from the
release editions of the Mintlify website.
Building the docs
Setup
- Install LanceDB Python. See setup in Python contributing guide.
Run
make developto install the Python package. - Install documentation dependencies. From LanceDB repo root:
pip install -r docs/requirements.txt
Preview the docs
Run these commands from the LanceDB repository root. The subshell changes into
docs to load mkdocs.yml, while leaving your shell in the repository root.
(cd docs && PYTHONPATH=. mkdocs serve)
If you want to just generate the HTML files:
(cd docs && PYTHONPATH=. mkdocs build)
If successful, you should see a docs/site directory in the repository root 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