Then you are stuck between a rock and a hard place. You don't want to switch away from XML::Simple, yet the author of XML::Simple freely admits that it's not suitable for the sort of task you're describing and recommends other modules instead. Quotes from the documentation:

"XML::Simple is able to present a simple API because it makes some assumptions on your behalf. These include:

• [...]
• "You don't want fine-grained control of the formatting of generated XML
• [...]

"In a serious XML project, you'll probably outgrow these assumptions fairly quickly.

[...]

"For event based parsing, use SAX (do not set out to write any new code for XML::Parser's handler API - it is obselete).

"For tree-based parsing, you could choose between the 'Perlish' approach of XML::Twig and more standards based DOM implementations - preferably one with XPath support such as XML::LibXML."

Personally I use XML::LibXML for virtually any XML-handling task that's thrown my way, and am rarely disappointed by it.

Yes, you are right..
If I am lucky I can convince people installing this package so I can switch to it. Thanks a lot!

However, I have found a solution :-))

XML Simple puts nearly every hash as an XML-attribute. But not if its pointing to another hash, example
:

$tdata->{'TABLE-CAPTION'} = {'ID' => $_id, 'LONG-NAME' => {content => 
+'Test results'}};
[download]

Using content will create another XML-tag and not an attribute. But for using this I had to configure XML-Simple like this.

    my $xmlParser  = new XML::Simple(
    RootName => 'TABLE',
    KeepRoot=>1,
    ValueAttr=>{
        'TABLE-CAPTION' => 'ID',
        'ContentKey' => 'content',
    }
[download]

Now its working fine, look at this: ^^


P>Testresults:</P><TABLE>
  <TABLE-CAPTION ID="ID42.401123046875">
    <LONG-NAME>Testresults</LONG-NAME>
  </TABLE-CAPTION>
  <TGROUP COLS="4">
    <COLSPEC COLNAME="test-id" COLNUM="0" COLWIDTH="1.00*" />
    <COLSPEC COLNAME="status" COLNUM="1" COLWIDTH="1.00*" />
    <COLSPEC COLNAME="test-spec" COLNUM="2" COLWIDTH="1.00*" />
    <COLSPEC COLNAME="requirement-ids" COLNUM="3" COLWIDTH="1.00*" />
    <TBODY>
      <ROW>
        <ENTRY COLNAME="test-id">
...
[download]


Thank you very much for all your hints and tips!

Best regards!!
Tobias

XML::Rules is a single .pm file and its only non-core dependency is XML::Parser which you most probably already have so if you can create/upload your script, you can "install"/upload XML::Rules. No compilation or configuration required, you just need to put the Rules.pm into a directory named XML in one of the directories listed by perl -e "print join qq{\n}, @INC".

Yes, even you can use CPAN