I have a User class with a has_many :messages and a Message class which belongs_to :user. In the Message controller's show action has the corresponding view: <% if @messages.any? %> <ol class="microposts"> <%= render partial: 'shared/message', collection: @messages %> </ol> <% end %> And the shared/_message.html.erb template looks like this: <li id="<%= message.id %>"> <span class="content"><%= message.body %></span> <% user_id = message.from %> <% user = User.find(user_id) %> From: <%= user.name %> </li> I feel like the following two lines should be done in the Messages controller from what I read in tutorials on Rails: <% user_id = message.from %> <% user = User.find(user_id) %> But how would I pass each message's corresponding from value (which stores user.id) into the partial? thanks, mike