Initially I had a more elaborate version based on the exact connect() code in the higher class, but this simpler version works just fine. Incidentally, what the xen xm commandline tool uses works identically ;)

class UHTTPConnection(httplib.HTTPConnection):
    """Subclass of Python library HTTPConnection that
       uses a unix-domain socket.
    """

    def __init__(self, path):
        httplib.HTTPConnection.__init__(self, 'localhost')
        self.path = path

    def connect(self):
        sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_UNIX, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
        sock.connect(self.path)
        self.sock = sock

This small hack plus the fine PHP serialization classes from Scott Hurring are the basis of OpenPanel.coreclient, which allows for very easy provisioning and querying of OpenPanel/opencore data. We use it mostly for unit testing.