## 1.11.7 Using Stores

We can now use our `store` variable to set and retrieve values from our `testApp` application's session store. Below is a demonstration of the functional interface:

    store = session.store('testApp')
    >>> store.set(key='first',value='This is the fist key to be set!')
    >>> print store.get(key='first')
    This is the fist key to be set!
    >>> print store.keys()
    ['first']
    >>> store.delete(key='first')
    >>> store.has_key(key='first')
    0

Alternatively we can treat the `store` object as a dictionary:

    >>> store['first'] = 'This is the fist key to be set!'
    >>> print store['first']
    This is the fist key to be set!
    >>> print store.keys()
    ['first']
    >>> del store['first']
    >>> store.has_key('first')
    0

Both versions behave in exactly the same way and any Python value that can be pickled by the `pickle` module can be set and retrieved from the store so you can store strings, numbers and even classes and all the information will be available for each request until you remove it or the session expires.

One other useful method of the `Store` object is the `empty()` method. This is used to remove all information from an application's session store. This is a better way of removing information than using the `Manager`'s `destroy()` method since `destroy()` will also remove all the information from other application's stores which might cause those applications to crash if the store is currently being accessed.