force a type to be viewed as a container-type when serialized to Lua
template <typename T>
struct as_returns_t { ... };
template <typename T>
as_returns_t<T> as_returns( T&& );Sometimes, you have a type whose metatable you claim with a usertype metatable via :doc:`usertype semantics<usertype>`. But, it still has parts of it that make it behave like a container in C++: A value_type typedef, an iterator typedef, a begin, an end, and other things that satisfy the Container requirements or the Sequence Container requirements or behaves like a forward_list.
Whatever the case is, you need it to be returned to Lua and have many of the traits and functionality described in the :doc:`containers documentation<../containers>`. Wrap a return type or a setter in sol::as_container( value ); to allow for a type to be treated like a container, regardless of whether sol::is_container triggers or not.
See this container example to see how it works.