Hi .. A conceptual question this time. I have the relation: member (m)---(1) member_type The schema looks something like this (simplified + PGSQL) create table member_types ( id serial, info varchar( 20 ) not null, primary key( id ) ); create table members ( id serial, first_name varchar( 100 ) not null, last_name varchar( 100 ) not null, email varchar( 100 ) not null, member_type_id integer not null, primary key( id ), constraint fk_m_member_type foreign key( member_type_id ) \ references member_types( id ) ); And in the model: class Member < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :voice_type # validation stuff removed end My question is that I want to add a new member, with the member_types as a select list. Obviously, when I add the member to the database, I will want to add the id, rather than the actual member_type. In app/views/admin/new.rhtml, I have this (snippet from table add): @mt = MemberType.find( :all, :order => "info" ) select( :member_type_id, :member_type, @mt ) Which returns the correct number of rows, but of Object IDs, rather than the info strings. Clearly I haven''t got it right. I am pretty sure that this would be a FAQ, though I am not able to find anything that directly answers this type of question. Any help appreciated. -- -mark. ---------------------------------------------------- Mark Probert probertm at acm dot org ----------------------------------------------------