The problem at hand is how to handle missing (but not required) refs to other objects when working in a view (that was not clear - gimme a minute:-). There has been some discussion of this on the wiki, but I was wondering what others thought about handling this. I have class A that belongs_to class B, and I want to display an attribute of B in the view, so I do something like the following: <%= A.B.b_attr || "Value not available" %> B is an optional attribute, i.e., it is not required to be set, so this throws an exception under those circumstances. Option 1: <%= A.B.b_attr rescue "Value not available" %> Option 2: Define the reader for B_attr alias old_b_attr b_attr def b_attr if self.b_attr_id.nil? B.new # essentially, create a new empty version else old_b_attr end end BTW, I''m using the alias method because read_attribute does not work (afaik) with fkey relationships. Both of these methods work, but still don''t quite feel "right". Any suggestions? TIA, Keith -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.