HTTP/1.1

Overview

HTTP/1.1 is Pounce's default and only required protocol. Two backends are available:

Backend	Type	Install	Best For
h11	Pure Python	Built-in	Debugging, portability
httptools	C extension	`pounce[fast]`	Maximum throughput

Pounce auto-detects httptools at import time. If installed, it's used automatically.

h11 Backend

The default backend. Pure Python, no compilation needed:

import pounce

# Uses h11 by default
pounce.run("myapp:app")

h11 is a state-machine-based HTTP/1.1 parser. It's well-tested, handles edge cases correctly, and is easy to debug.

httptools Backend

For higher throughput, install the httptools extra:

uv add "bengal-pounce[fast]"

httptools wraps the Node.js HTTP parser (llhttp) in a Python C extension. It's significantly faster for parsing but adds a compiled dependency.

Keep-Alive

Pounce reuses TCP connections between requests (HTTP/1.1 keep-alive). The timeout is configurable:

pounce.run("myapp:app", keep_alive_timeout=5.0)  # seconds

After the timeout, idle connections are closed. Set max_requests_per_connectionto limit requests per connection (0 = unlimited).

Chunked Transfer

Pounce handles chunked transfer encoding transparently. When your ASGI app sends multiplehttp.response.body events with more_body=True, Pounce uses chunked encoding automatically.

Limits

Setting	Default	Description
`max_request_size`	1 MB	Maximum request body size
`max_header_size`	64 KB	Maximum total header size
`max_headers`	100	Maximum number of headers
`h11_max_incomplete_event_size`	16 KB	h11 parser buffer limit