Thanks for the replies. I'm sure this would be better as a new post but the short of what I am trying to do is this. Add elements to nodes based on the attribute value or create a new file if it does not exist. The basic file would be this.

<root>
 <node id = "1">
  <request>
   <question> ... </question>
  </request>
 </node>
</root>
[download]

Answers would be appended to the node with a matching id.

<root>
 <node id = "1">
  <request>
   <question> ... </question>
  </request>
  <reply>
   <answer> ... </answer>
  </reply>
  <reply>
   <answer> ... </answer>
  <reply>
 </node>
</root>
[download]

I would also like to remove nodes based on the id attribute. And be able to do all this through a Jabber bot similar to Peter Saint-Andre's surveyor.