From: Daniel DeLorme <dan-ml@...42.com>
Date: 2010-05-15T11:19:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Asynchronous HTTP request

Brian Candler wrote:
> 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.

Thanks for your answer. It was a bit more low-level than I would've 
liked to, but it helped me get the creative juices flowing. In the end 
my solution involved wrapping the request's socket in a Fiber. Quite a 
monkeypatch perhaps, but it seems to work:

   class ASync
     class ASocket < BasicObject
       def initialize(socket)
         @socket = socket
       end
       def method_missing(name, *args, &block)
         ::Fiber.yield if name =~ /read/
         @socket.send(name, *args, &block)
       end
     end
     def initialize(uri, headers={})
       uri = URI.parse(uri) unless uri.is_a?(URI)
       @fiber = ::Fiber.new do
         Net::HTTP.start(uri.host, uri.port) do |http|
           http.instance_eval{ @socket = ASocket.new(@socket) }
           @response = http.get(uri.request_uri, headers)
         end
       end
       @fiber.resume #send the request
     end
     def method_missing(*args, &block)
       @fiber.resume until @response
       @response.send(*args, &block)
     end
   end