At 3:45 AM +0900 4/21/07, Nanyang Zhan wrote: > I've just built a acts_as_tree model, > now I need to render it out as a tree structure in view. > and I also need a action method to loop through every row ... The word "loop" may be leading you in the wrong direction. If you hear the words "tree" or "hierarchy", you should be looking at recursive solutions. So, in pseudo-ruby: # walk - level is either an item or a tree of items # def walk(level) if level.is_leaf? # handle leaf action else # handle branch pre-action level.each { |item| walk(item) } # handle branch post-action end end In my (limited) experience, recursive code tends to be very small and simple, once written. Writing it, however, can be challenging, in that it requires a different way of thinking than iterative code does. There are also tree-walk routines that will simply allow you to iterate through the nodes of a tree. Whether there is a routine such as this for your particular tree, I don't know. -r -- http://www.cfcl.com/rdm Rich Morin http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume rdm / cfcl.com http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/weblog +1 650-873-7841 Technical editing and writing, programming, and web development