I've just made a quick modification to the fetch function from gluon.tools and felt it might be worth posting.
http://wklej.to/rLuT - I've pasted the code online since I didn't really have time for sending a proper patch (whatever would that mean for web2py - BTW, some guide about it wouldn't hurt). The main difference is that when not on GAE it uses httplib instead of urllib2, so it can use any HTTP method (including PUT and DELETE). It also lets you send data that is not urlencoded (some web APIs are based on JSON or XML, so I thought such a feature might come in handy. The first new feature is controlled by the method keyword argument. If it's value is not specified it behaves like it did before (POST if it sends data and GET otherwise). The second feature is controlled by the encode_data keyword argument (which defaults to True). PS. I'm affraid I didn't implement redirection handling. I'll get to it asap, but now it's 4 am in my timezone and I need some sleep right now. PPS. Since HTTPConnection.request accepts file-like objects as the requests body I think I should count that as implementing three features. ;)
