////
Copyright (c) 2022 Dmitry Arkhipov (grisumbras@yandex.ru)

Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying
file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)

Official repository: https://github.com/boostorg/json
////

= Avoiding Physical Dependency
Some users, particularly library authors, may wish to provide conversions
between their types and <<ref_value>>, but at the same time would prefer to
avoid having their library depend on Boost.JSON. This is possible to achieve
with the help of a few forward declarations.

[source]
----
include::../../../test/doc_forward_conversion.cpp[tag=doc_forward_conversion_1,indent=0]
----

Note that <<ref_value_from>> is declared using an out-parameter, rather then
returning its result. This overload is specifically designed for this use-case.

After that the definitions of `tag_invoke` overloads should be provided. These
overloads have to be templates, since <<ref_value>> is only forward-declared
and hence is an incomplete type.

[source]
----
include::../../../test/doc_forward_conversion.cpp[tag=doc_forward_conversion_2,indent=0]
----

As discussed previously, we prefer to define a non-throwing overload of
`tag_invoke` for <<ref_try_value_to>>, rather then the throwing overload for
<<ref_value_to>>, as the latter can fallback to the former without performance
degradation.

Forward declarations of contextual conversions are done very similarly:

[source]
----
include::../../../test/doc_forward_conversion.cpp[tag=doc_forward_conversion_3,indent=0]
----
