When I try to create it with objects, and sub-objects I get the types and bless(...) stuff mixed in. The inital objects were Features and Item.

I'm not sure if you want to read the XML as objects or output objects as XML or both, but if you're happy with the data structure that XML::Simple gives you, why bother converting that to/from objects at all?

On the other hand, if you like Data::Dumper, there's no reason to use XML. :-)

If you just want your XML data split into objects, you could always use some other, object-oriented XML parser (i.e. XML::Twig)

Ps: I tried to find some kind of Perl "object serializer" that reads and writes XML, but I could not find it immediately. (It's 2:30 at night here, so I'm tired) Others here might have more info, or you could try searching CPAN for it yourself.

Joost.