there is an interesting page http://scotdoyle.com/python-epoll-howto.html about how to do asnchronous / non-blocking / AIO http serving in python 3.

there is the tornado web server which does include a non-blocking http client. i have managed to port parts of the server to python 3.1, but the implementation of the client requires pyCurl and seems to have problems (with one participant stating how ‘Libcurl is such a pain in the neck’, and looking at the incredibly ugly pyCurl page i doubt pyCurl will arrive in py3+ any time soon).

now that epoll is available in the standard library, it should be possible to do asynchronous http requests out of the box with python. i really do not want to use asyncore or whatnot; epoll has a reputation for being the ideal tool for the task, and it is part of the python distribution, so using anything but epoll for non-blocking http is highly counterintuitive (prove me wrong if you feel like it).

oh, and i feel threading is horrible. no threading. i use stackless.

people further interested in the topic of asynchronous http should not miss out on this talk by peter portante at PyCon2010; also of interest is the keynote, where speaker antonio rodriguez at one point emphasizes the importance of having up-to-date web technology libraries right in the standard library.