From: Brian Candler <b.candler@...>
Date: 2010-05-13T23:07:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Asynchronous HTTP request

Daniel DeLorme wrote:
> I just want to issue the http request, do other stuff while the request
> goes on its merry way, let the response accumulate at the socket, and
> read the data when I'm ready to.

Hmm. Well you can delay reading the body like this:

  http = Net::HTTP.start(...)
  res = http.get(...)
  ... do some stuff
  answer = res.read_body

but it'll wait for the response headers before get() returns. So, you 
should just pick the bits you need out of /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb 
directly.

Note that get() just calls request(Get.new(...)), which takes you here:

    def request(req, body = nil, &block)  # :yield: +response+
      unless started?
        start {
          req['connection'] ||= 'close'
          return request(req, body, &block)
        }
      end
      if proxy_user()
        unless use_ssl?
          req.proxy_basic_auth proxy_user(), proxy_pass()
        end
      end

      req.set_body_internal body
      begin_transport req
        req.exec @socket, @curr_http_version, edit_path(req.path)
        begin
          res = HTTPResponse.read_new(@socket)
        end while res.kind_of?(HTTPContinue)
        res.reading_body(@socket, req.response_body_permitted?) {
          yield res if block_given?
        }
      end_transport req, res

      res
    end

You can see there how to send the request (req.exec), and subsequently 
how to read the response from the socket.
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