For your input, I think I'd rather have this output:

$VAR1 = {
          'banana' => {
                      'date' => '1231210'
                    },
          'apple' => {
                     'time' => '235959',
                     'date' => '1231210'
                   }
        };
[download]

And I can get that with XML::Rules:

use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::Rules;
use Data::Dumper;

my @rules = (
   _default => sub { "%".$_[0] => {$_[1]->{name} => $_[1]->{value}}},
   main => 'pass no content',
);

my $text=<<EOF;
<main>
  <apple name="date" value="1231210"/>
  <apple name="time" value="235959"/>
  <banana name="date" value="1231210"/>
</main>
EOF

my $p = XML::Rules->new(
  rules => \@rules,
);
my $x = $p->parse($text);
print Dumper $x;
[download]