Python - HTTPConnection State Machine

This state machine diagram from the Python source code (client.py in Python 3, httplib.py in Python 2) is useful for understanding the different states of a client/server connection via HTTP:

http://svn.python.org/view/python/branches/py3k/Lib/http/

HTTPConnection goes through a number of "states", which define when a client
may legally make another request or fetch the response for a particular
request. This diagram details these state transitions:

    (null)
      |
      | HTTPConnection()
      v
    Idle
      |
      | putrequest()
      v
    Request-started
      |
      | ( putheader() )*  endheaders()
      v
    Request-sent
      |
      | response = getresponse()
      v
    Unread-response   [Response-headers-read]
      |\____________________
      |                     |
      | response.read()     | putrequest()
      v                     v
    Idle                  Req-started-unread-response
                     ______/|
                   /        |
   response.read() |        | ( putheader() )*  endheaders()
                   v        v
       Request-started    Req-sent-unread-response
                            |
                            | response.read()
                            v
                          Request-sent

This diagram presents the following rules:
  -- a second request may not be started until {response-headers-read}
  -- a response [object] cannot be retrieved until {request-sent}
  -- there is no differentiation between an unread response body and a
     partially read response body