Comment by Emil Moe on "Why HTTP is called as Stateless Protocol?"

A session is not the same as a state.

The reason it is stateless is because you don't keep a constant connection to the server, but you send a request and get a response. Then the communication ends (simplified).

If you take a protocol like SSH or FTP, it can be in a state of connected, because it keeps up the connection. If something interfere with the connection (ie you lose WiFi) the state is broken, where in HTTP you can be disconnected and reconnected and the server will never know.

The session is a short term reference to your session, but it's not a state. Sure if you go into the details, the server (but this is not a part of the HTTP protocol) will have open and closed sessions which might be seen as states.

The reason it is stateless is because you don't keep a constant connection

Not correct. It's stateless because the server does not need to store information about the client in between calls. See my answer 😉 In addition, Wikipedia has a nice article.

How would you keep the state without a constant connection then? I still think my answer is as correct.

Emil Moe State has nothing to do with the connection. State in this case means that the server stores information about the client. For example if a protocol stores information about how often a client connects to it and acts based on that, then it's a stateful protocol. HTTP is stateless. Every request a client does is like the first and n-th request, the server cannot differentiate. It's just the business-logic, which uses workarounds like cookies, which can do so and act upon it. You can compare statelessness to functional programming. You should really look it up!

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