# Insert to associated table question **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [January 6, 2006, 1:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/insert-to-associated-table-question/51732 "2006-01-06T13:47:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2006, 1:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/insert-to-associated-table-question/51732/1 "2006-01-06T13:47:47Z")
Hello Friendly Gurus, I have a volunteers table and an hours tables. I’ve edited the respective models to have: “hours belongs\_to :volunteer” and “volunteers has\_many :hours”. My problem is, I don’t know how to set the volunteer\_id column in the hours table to the appropriate value so that hours will belong to volunteers. I’ve added the following line to list.rhtml in the volunteers view so I can pass the volunteer id to the hours new action: " \<%= link\_to ‘Add Hours’, :controller =\> ‘hours’, :action =\> ‘new’, :id =\> volunteer %\> " My thought is that I would pass the volunteer id to the hours controller and convert it into a hidden field in the “new” form so that we can use it to populate the volunteer\_id column. This is how the PHP Spaghetti coder in me would have done it, but I suppose there is a more elegant Rails way to do this. I hope you can help. Thank you in advance! -Sean C., Rails Nube and recovering PHP Spaghetti Coder ---
**Author:** ![smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@smc7000](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/smc7000)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2006, 9:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/insert-to-associated-table-question/51732/2 "2006-01-06T21:23:00Z")
STFW, Sean! (Awesome! I got to finally do that to someone that won’t be offended!) [Radar – O’Reilly](http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rails.html) - parts 4 and 5 begin to show how to tie 2 tables together.