self-referencing table - how to process?

rubyonrails-talk
1

I have a self-referencing table 'Properties' and I want to build a hierarchy of all properties starting at the lowest in the tree. What is the best approach to this is Rails?

for example:

"properties" table

id>name>belongs_to_id 1|item1|NULL 2|item 2|1 3|item 3|NULL 4|item 4|2

So how would I retrieve the related rows with ids 1,2,4 in such a way that I can easily build a tree-like list such as:

1 ...2 ......4

Thanks, Lee