FogHTTP

Rust-powered HTTP client for Python with sync and asyncio APIs.

FogHTTP is an early MVP HTTP client. The public API is Python-first, while the transport core is implemented in Rust on top of hyper.

FogHTTP is positioned as an observable, high-concurrency Rust-powered transport for Python services. It is built for controlled service-to-service HTTP workloads where explicit lifecycle, predictable resource usage, cancellation, redirect history, and request backpressure visibility matter more than browser-like feature parity.

Until version 0.5.0, backward compatibility is not guaranteed. I will still try to keep public interfaces stable and avoid unnecessary breaking changes.

Why FogHTTP

• Rust hyper transport with a Python-first API
• sync and asyncio clients with the same request model
• explicit close()/aclose() lifecycle for Rust transport resources
• graceful sync close() for in-flight requests and cancellable async requests
• bounded global/per-origin request backpressure, FIFO pending-acquire limits, explicit HTTP/1.1 connection caps, and per-origin pressure diagnostics
• typed telemetry event hooks with redacted request/response lifecycle events
• versioned telemetry snapshots that separate alert-oriented stats from diagnostic dump APIs
• opt-in async lifecycle debug snapshots for staging and tests
• lazy process-wide shared Tokio runtime by default, opt-in dedicated runtime tuning, and fail-closed client ownership across fork()
• focused HTTP surface for JSON, form, streaming upload, and multipart API workloads in internal services, workers, and benchmarks

Install

pip install foghttp

Runtime requirements:

• Python >=3.11
• orjson>=3.11,<4

Published CPython wheels use the stable cp311-abi3 ABI: each supported OS/architecture pair has one wheel for the currently validated GIL-enabled CPython 3.11 through 3.14 range. Newer Python versions are not part of the compatibility claim until they pass the same release checks. See Packaging and Python compatibility for the complete wheel matrix and validation policy.

Quick Start

import foghttp


with foghttp.Client(
    base_url="https://api.example.com",
    headers={"accept": "application/json"},
    params={"api-version": "1"},
) as client:
    response = client.get(
        "users",
        params={"limit": 10},
    )

    response.raise_for_status()
    print(response.status_code)
    print(response.json())

Async clients use the same request API:

import foghttp


async with foghttp.AsyncClient() as client:
    response = await client.post(
        "https://api.example.com/users",
        json={"name": "Ada Lovelace"},
    )
    response.raise_for_status()

What Works Today

• sync Client and async AsyncClient
• GET, HEAD, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, and RFC 10008 QUERY
• base_url for reusable API clients and relative request paths
• default client headers and query params for reusable API clients
• query params with repeated keys, JSON, form-urlencoded data, buffered bytes/text bodies, binary file-like request bodies, and streaming bytes-like upload providers
• multipart files= uploads with bytes-like parts, binary file-like objects, direct byte streams, and replayable byte-stream factories
• buffered Response with status flags, charset-aware text, json(), raise_for_status(), and request metadata
• transparent gzip, deflate, and br decoding for buffered responses
• sync and async bytes/text/line response streaming with explicit context-managed lifecycle
• prepared Request objects with build_request() and send()
• immutable request extensions for policy/application metadata outside the HTTP message
• case-insensitive Headers with repeated values
• safe policy for transport-managed request headers
• redacted repr/error surfaces for sensitive headers, URL credentials, token-like URL params, and buffered body bytes
• normalized URL model with origin comparison and relative joins
• GET/HEAD/POST/QUERY redirects with final URL, history, typed same-origin and cross-origin header policy, and no cross-origin body replay
• HTTP proxy routing and HTTPS proxy CONNECT tunnelling through explicit proxy= or trust_env=True when the proxy endpoint uses http://
• HTTPS with default WebPKI roots, explicit custom CA certificates, and custom-only CA trust
• graceful sync close() that waits for in-flight sync requests
• async request cancellation that aborts the in-flight Rust request
• bounded global and per-origin request slots with a bounded FIFO pending queue
• opt-in global/per-origin HTTP/1.1 connection caps with separate connection acquire pressure and idle lifecycle diagnostics
• opt-in typed telemetry event hooks for request, redirect, response headers, response body, and request completion lifecycle
• opt-in typed transport policy hooks for lightweight request admission and response-head checks without default-path Python callbacks
• opt-in Rust-owned retry policy for selected statuses and pre-header network failures, with safe methods and replayable bodies by default
• versioned telemetry snapshot metadata for stats(), dump_transport_state(), and dump_pool_diagnostics()
• opt-in async lifecycle debug mode for active request snapshots, strict leak checks, and unclosed-client diagnostics
• default per-response and aggregate buffered response body limits for memory safety
• shared Tokio runtime by default, with opt-in dedicated runtime worker tuning
• grouped HTTP status constants and reusable HTTP method constants

Documentation

• Documentation
• Quickstart
• Request builder compatibility
• Client lifecycle
• Packaging and Python compatibility
• Timeout model
• Upload typing contracts
• Transport policy hooks
• Retry policy
• Telemetry contract
• Response streaming
• Proxy and trust_env
• TLS trust
• Use cases
• Redirects
• Limitations
• Benchmarks
• Runnable examples

Current Limitations

FogHTTP is currently focused on controlled HTTP workloads. Buffered responses are the broadest supported response path; sync and async response streaming are available as bytes/text/line context-managed APIs. Streaming content= uploads and multipart files= uploads are available with explicit replayability and cleanup rules. HTTP proxy routing and HTTPS proxy CONNECT tunnelling are available through proxy= and trust_env=True when the proxy endpoint itself uses http://. Cookies, auth helpers, HTTP/2, automatic Accept-Encoding negotiation, streaming decompression, and per-request connect timeout reconfiguration are planned for later versions. Physical connection caps currently apply to the HTTP/1.1 connector path; HTTP/2 will require separate stream-level limits. Response body read timeout is available for buffered and streaming response bodies; request body write timeout is available for buffered and streaming request bodies. Socket lifecycle telemetry is available for the current HTTP/1 path. Disabling TLS verification is intentionally not supported.

Development

Development requires a Rust toolchain with cargo available in PATH.

uv run --extra dev --with "maturin>=1.7,<2" maturin develop --locked --skip-install
uv run --extra dev coverage run -m pytest
uv run --extra dev coverage report -m
uv run --extra dev pre-commit run --all-files --show-diff-on-failure