Asynchronous urllib (urllib+asyncore)?

[Jonathan Gardner]

So, I ran into a problem that I would like to write as little code as
possible to solve.

The problem is that I would like to send out a bunch of HTTP requests
simultaneously, using asynchronous techniques, and then do stuff with
the results in parallel. Think of something like Google's map-reduce.

It sounds like this would be something someone else has done before. I
searched google, but I don't think there is any discussion anywhere of
anyone doing something like this.

I am sure Twisted folks can code this up in 2 lines or less, or it
probably already exists there by default. But I need this to exist in
a non-asynchronous environment. I can't let Twisted take over
everything.

So, has someone done something like this? Is it something where I can
bring the urllib and asyncore together? Or is it much more involved?