creating tar file and streaming it over HTTP?

[pbienst]

I would like to bundle up a number of files in a tar file and send it
over a HTTP connection, but I would like to do this without creating
the tar file on disk first.

I know I can get tarfile to output to a stream by doing something like

tar_pipe = tarfile.open(mode="w|", fileobj=my_file_obj)

However, I can't figure out which file object to use to send this over
a HTTP connection.

I tried

conn = httplib.HTTPConnection(hostname, port)
conn.putrequest("PUT", "/client/files")
conn.endheaders()
tar_pipe = tarfile.open(mode="w|", fileobj=conn.sock.makefile())
for filename in filenames:
    tar_pipe.add(filename)
tar_pipe.close()
conn.getresponse()

but that does not send any data...