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+Custom type casters
+===================
+
+In very rare cases, applications may require custom type casters that cannot be
+expressed using the abstractions provided by pybind11, thus requiring raw
+Python C API calls. This is fairly advanced usage and should only be pursued by
+experts who are familiar with the intricacies of Python reference counting.
+
+The following snippets demonstrate how this works for a very simple ``inty``
+type that that should be convertible from Python types that provide a
+``__int__(self)`` method.
+
+.. code-block:: cpp
+
+    struct inty { long long_value; };
+
+    void print(inty s) {
+        std::cout << s.long_value << std::endl;
+    }
+
+The following Python snippet demonstrates the intended usage from the Python side:
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+    class A:
+        def __int__(self):
+            return 123
+
+    from example import print
+    print(A())
+
+To register the necessary conversion routines, it is necessary to add
+a partial overload to the ``pybind11::detail::type_caster<T>`` template.
+Although this is an implementation detail, adding partial overloads to this
+type is explicitly allowed.
+
+.. code-block:: cpp
+
+    namespace pybind11 { namespace detail {
+        template <> struct type_caster<inty> {
+        public:
+            /**
+             * This macro establishes the name 'inty' in
+             * function signatures and declares a local variable
+             * 'value' of type inty
+             */
+            PYBIND11_TYPE_CASTER(inty, _("inty"));
+
+            /**
+             * Conversion part 1 (Python->C++): convert a PyObject into a inty
+             * instance or return false upon failure. The second argument
+             * indicates whether implicit conversions should be applied.
+             */
+            bool load(handle src, bool) {
+                /* Extract PyObject from handle */
+                PyObject *source = src.ptr();
+                /* Try converting into a Python integer value */
+                PyObject *tmp = PyNumber_Long(source);
+                if (!tmp)
+                    return false;
+                /* Now try to convert into a C++ int */
+                value.long_value = PyLong_AsLong(tmp);
+                Py_DECREF(tmp);
+                /* Ensure return code was OK (to avoid out-of-range errors etc) */
+                return !(value.long_value == -1 && !PyErr_Occurred());
+            }
+
+            /**
+             * Conversion part 2 (C++ -> Python): convert an inty instance into
+             * a Python object. The second and third arguments are used to
+             * indicate the return value policy and parent object (for
+             * ``return_value_policy::reference_internal``) and are generally
+             * ignored by implicit casters.
+             */
+            static handle cast(inty src, return_value_policy /* policy */, handle /* parent */) {
+                return PyLong_FromLong(src.long_value);
+            }
+        };
+    }} // namespace pybind11::detail
+
+.. warning::
+
+    When using custom type casters, it's important to declare them consistently
+    in every compilation unit of the Python extension module. Otherwise,
+    undefined behavior can ensue.