Hey,
Depending on your code, you should be able to just do @article.id in your view to access the current article's id. For a route you can even drop the .id:
<%= link_to 'Edit this article', :action => 'edit', :id => @article %>
and if you're using map.resources, it's even shorter:
<%= link_to 'Edit this article', edit_article_path(@article) %>
Hope that helps,
Steve