issues working with python generators and openstack swift client

I'm having a problem with Python generators while working with the Openstack Swift client library.

The problem at hand is that I am trying to retrieve a large string of data from a specific url (about 7MB), chunk the string into smaller bits, and send a generator class back, with each iteration holding a chunked bit of the string. in the test suite, this is just a string that's sent to a monkeypatched class of the swift client for processing.

The code in the monkeypatched class looks like this:

def monkeypatch_class(name, bases, namespace):
    '''Guido's monkeypatch metaclass.'''
    assert len(bases) == 1, "Exactly one base class required"
    base = bases[0]
    for name, value in namespace.iteritems():
        if name != "__metaclass__":
            setattr(base, name, value)
    return base

And in the test suite:

from swiftclient import client
import StringIO
import utils

class Connection(client.Connection):
    __metaclass__ = monkeypatch_class

    def get_object(self, path, obj, resp_chunk_size=None, ...):
        contents = None
        headers = {}

        # retrieve content from path and store it in 'contents'
        ...

        if resp_chunk_size is not None:
            # stream the string into chunks
            def _object_body():
                stream = StringIO.StringIO(contents)
                buf = stream.read(resp_chunk_size)
                while buf:
                    yield buf
                    buf = stream.read(resp_chunk_size)
            contents = _object_body()
        return headers, contents

After returning the generator object, it was called by a stream function in the storage class:

class SwiftStorage(Storage):

    def get_content(self, path, chunk_size=None):
        path = self._init_path(path)
        try:
            _, obj = self._connection.get_object(
                self._container,
                path,
                resp_chunk_size=chunk_size)
            return obj
        except Exception:
            raise IOError("Could not get content: {}".format(path))

    def stream_read(self, path):
        try:
            return self.get_content(path, chunk_size=self.buffer_size)
        except Exception:
            raise OSError(
                "Could not read content from stream: {}".format(path))

And finally, in my test suite:

def test_stream(self):
    filename = self.gen_random_string()
    # test 7MB
    content = self.gen_random_string(7 * 1024 * 1024)
    self._storage.stream_write(filename, io)
    io.close()
    # test read / write
    data = ''
    for buf in self._storage.stream_read(filename):
        data += buf
    self.assertEqual(content,
                     data,
                     "stream read failed. output: {}".format(data))

The output ends up with this:

======================================================================
FAIL: test_stream (test_swift_storage.TestSwiftStorage)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/bacongobbler/git/github.com/bacongobbler/docker-registry/test/test_local_storage.py", line 46, in test_stream
    "stream read failed. output: {}".format(data))
AssertionError: stream read failed. output: <generator object _object_body at 0x2a6bd20>

I tried isolating this with a simple python script that follows the same flow as the code above, which passed without issues:

def gen_num():
    def _object_body():
        for i in range(10000000):
            yield i
    return _object_body()

def get_num():
    return gen_num()

def stream_read():
    return get_num()

def main():
    num = 0
    for i in stream_read():
        num += i
    print num

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Any help with this issue is greatly appreciated :)