I don't fully understand your problem, you lost me at some point. But
to give you something to chew on. I would assume that your config data
could be stored in some form of hash. Design a sample hash that holds the
data you think you will want to process. Thne use XML::simple to convert it
into an XML file. Now you have an XML file designed specificly for your data
and you can use XML::simple and one line of code to repopulate your hash.
Something as simple as the following could generate your XML config file.
use XML::simple;
my %data = { Ball=>blue,sky=>clear };
my $hashref=/%data;
my $xml = XMLout($hashref []);