Hello, I''m integrating a rails application redesign with a legacy schema that requires the use of mixed character data as the primary key. I''m trying to setup my categories model to associate products which are related by a has_and_belongs_to_many association. The code below is what I''m using to do this. It works fine, except that when it inserts a product_id into the categories_products join table, it does so (so I know all that is set up properly) but with single quotes around it like this: ''724359778709'' when the key''s proper varchar value is 724359778709. Thus the association is not recognized after the insert because the product_id value in products_categories does not equal the real product ID. When I manually insert values into the join table, they are recognized and work fine. def add_product category = Category.find(params[:id]) new_product = Product.find(params[:input][:product_id]) if new_product flash[:notice] = params[:input][:product_id] + " added" category.products << new_product end redirect_to :action => ''edit'', :id => params[:id] end The above code generates the following SQL: INSERT INTO categories_products (`product_id`, `category_id`) VALUES (''\''724359778709\'''', ''1'') Can anyone tell me what to do so that it does not place those escaped single quotes in the INSERT... I''ve checked and all my MySQL fields match (i.e. they are all varchars of the proper length). Thanks, A. Engler