I want to create a user stamp functionality. user stamp would work like timestamp. columns named ''created_by'' or ''modified_by'' would automatically have the current session user''s id inserted into it. To do this I need to pass part of the sessions instance variable to each model that is called from a controller. I don''t want to explicitly pass it in the save, create, or update method call of the model. Is this even possible? How would you go about getting the data from the controller to the model? Charles -- Charles Dupont Computer System Analyst School of Medicine Department of Biostatistics Vanderbilt University