Hello Aldebaran, I finally got something neat that addresses 2 requirements : being able to access the XML and creating the XLS file for rendering to the user.

I'll share a piece of code below, which might answer your question about file/filename in the New() method.

I'm using 2 modules to achieve my objectives. Template & Excel::Template. I use the Template Toolkit to generate the required XML so that Excel::Template can produce the XLS. So my whole config generator engine benefits from TT and when I need an XLS file it's being treated separately.

use Template;
use Excel::Template;

sub xml_to_excel {

 my ($template_conf, $file, $hashref) = @_;  # template configuration 
+from config file, filename based on request number,  data for the tem
+plate processing
 my $xml; 

 my $tt = Template->new({
        RELATIVE => 1,        # in my case I had to use relative path 
+because of $template_conf->{file} based on CWD.
 });

 $tt->process( $template_conf->{file}, $hashref, \$xml ) || die $tt->e
+rror;   # write the output to the $xml string

 open my $xml_fh, "<", \$xml;  # create a filehandle from the $xml str
+ing so that Excel::Template can read it.

 my $ET = Excel::Template->new({
        file => $xml_fh,   # use the filehandle here 
 });

 $ET->write_file($file);

 return $xml || 0;

}
[download]

Hope this helps !