The response implementation class of Zend_Http_Client is strictly coupled to Zend_Http_Response. Introducing a factory method that is overridable improves flexibility and extensibility of the class, and providing custom

Zend_Http_Response currently doesn't employ an interface, so forcing a subclass of Zend_Http_Response makes sense, though more refactoring should be needed to simply have a contract based on a Zend_Http_ResponseInterface.

Index: Zend/Http/Client.php
===================================================================
--- Zend/Http/Client.php    (revision 4954)
+++ Zend/Http/Client.php    (working copy)
@@ -1003,7 +1003,10 @@
                     $response->setCleanup(true);
                 }
             } else {
-                $response = Zend_Http_Response::fromString($response);
+                $response = $this->_createResponseFromString($response);
+                if(! $response instanceof Zend_Http_Response) {
+                    throw new UnexpectedValueException(get_class($this) . '::_createResponseFromString() should return Zend_Http_Response instance');
+                }
             }
 
             if ($this->config['storeresponse']) {
@@ -1067,7 +1070,18 @@
         return $response;
     }
 
+
     /**
+     * Composes a Zend_Http_Response object based on the passed response string
+     * 
+     * @return Zend_Http_Response
+     */
+    protected function _createResponseFromString($responseString)
+    {
+        return Zend_Http_Response::fromString($responseString);
+    }
+
+    /**
      * Prepare the request headers
      *
      * @return array

revision doesn't match, btw, it is the revision of my own svn project's repository.