This is a full working example illustrating HTML5 websockets with the Aleph async server, along with synchronous HTTP requests from within the same application
https://github.com/ztellman/aleph

It uses compojure for routes, and a very small part for the Enlive templating library for web scraping
(https://github.com/cgrand/enlive)

This simple example started with a farily practical application:
retrieving and displaying message board postings synchronously, so as to eliminate frequent clicking on the refresh button, which is quite common for high-traffic message boards. Message would therefore be displayed as they come in a twitter-like fashion.


Logic:
 you open up in the browser IP:PORT/<thread_id> (thread_id is just for the current example, you can adjust this initial route to suit your needs)
 aleph renders public/ws.html, which opens up a websockets connection, calling the function websocket-activity in socket.clj
 in websocket-activity, your desired url is being "polled" with regular sync HTTP requests
 response is parsed and continually enqueued in the channel, and the responses are then synchronously rendered by ws.html as they arrive


After running "lein deps" you need to make the changes below, before starting Jetty with "run_this"

public/ws.html:

put your server's IP in 
        ws = new WebSocket("ws://IP:PORT/socket/get");

appends data using jquery appends
        ws.onmessage = function(evt) { $("#msg").append("<p>"+evt.data+"</p>"); };



src/aleph/socket.clj

  uses an atom to store the full base-url, since it is constructed from the thread id string that we pass
  normally, you would define *base-url* to be what you need, and remove the dynamic construction based on the GET parameter

 adjust paths in the routes
  e.g.    {:root "full-path-to-project/aleph-websockets-ring-example/public"}


First accessed route YOUR-IP:YOUR-PORT/thread_id. This is a synchronous Ring-style request

(GET "/:thread_id" {params :params}
  builds the full base-url based on the thread id, and then 
renders the ws.html page that will open a websocket connection. that connection will communicate with the /socket/get route:
(GET "/socket/get" [] (wrap-aleph-handler websocket-activity))
- the handling of this is done asynchronously