Updating a record with select

Rails
1

Hello,

I have displayed a list of people and now i want to assign them a
relation for example … friend, brother,stranger,etc. the list of
relations is stored with me.
How can I use the select option(probably have to use onchange) so that
the moment i select the relation the record of the person is updated.
The name of the table from where i have to pick the relations is
“relations”

Person model
belongs_to :person

relation model
has_many :people

show.rhtml in view
<[email protected] do |person|%>

<%=$i%> <%= link_to (image_tag(person.public_filename(:thumb)), person.public_filename) rescue nil%> <%=link_to person.title,:controller=>"person",:action=>"edit",:id=>person.id%> <%=link_to person.first_name,:controller=>"person",:action=>"edit",:id=>person.id%> <%=link_to person.last_name,:controller=>"person",:action=>"edit",:id=>person.id%> <%=link_to person.email1,:controller=>"person",:action=>"edit",:id=>person.id%> select statement goes here.......what should be written here <%$i = $i+1%>

Thank you.