requests vs sockets

common.py

URL = 'http://httpbin.org/status/200'

def check(status_code, headers, content):
    assert status_code == 200
    assert headers['Content-Length'] == '0'
    assert headers['Content-Type'] == 'text/html; charset=utf-8'
    assert headers['Connection'] == 'close'
    print 'OK'

example_requests.py

import requests
from common import URL, check

def run():
    response = requests.get(URL)
    return response.status_code, response.headers, response.content

if __name__ == '__main__':
    check(*run())

example_sockets.py

import socket
from common import URL, check

def run():
    protocol, rest = URL.split('://', 1)
    host, path = rest.split('/', 1)
    path = '/%s' % path
    s = socket.socket()
    s.connect((host, 80))
    s.send('GET %s HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: %s\r\n\r\n' % (path, host))
    data = ''
    while True:
        block = s.recv(1024)
        data += block
        if not block:
            break
    s.close()
    raw_headers, content = data.split('\r\n\r\n')
    raw_status, raw_headers = raw_headers.split('\r\n', 1)
    status = raw_status[len('HTTP/1.1 '):]
    status_code = int(status.split(' ', 1)[0])
    headers = dict([[x.strip() for x in line.split(':', 1)] for line in raw_headers.split('\r\n') if line.strip()])
    return status_code, headers, content


if __name__ == '__main__':
    check(*run())

output

jonas@jonas-Serval-Professional:~/playground/pyhttp$ time python example_sockets.py 
OK

real	0m0.278s
user	0m0.028s
sys	0m0.008s
jonas@jonas-Serval-Professional:~/playground/pyhttp$ time python example_requests.py 
OK

real	0m0.604s
user	0m0.152s
sys	0m0.028s