What best describes the stateless nature of REST?

• A. Each request must contain all information needed to process it
• B. The server stores client state between requests
• C. Sessions are stored on the server
• D. REST uses cookies to track state

Answer: (A)

Statelessness in REST means the server does not keep any memory of previous requests about a client. Each request must carry everything the server needs to understand and complete it. This often means including authentication data and any request-specific state in the request itself, such as tokens in headers and all necessary parameters in the URL or body. Because no session information is stored on the server, it can handle many requests from different clients without relying on server-side memory of past interactions, which also makes load balancing and scaling easier.

That’s why the best description is that each request must contain all information needed to process it. The other ideas describe state being kept on the server, which REST explicitly avoids, and using cookies to track state would contradict the stateless design.