XML::Mini provides very simple mapping between hashes and XML, this dramatically reduces amount of XML-related code in your app ( at least my experiences suggests so - this makes my code wrangle only with logic, and xml-parsing and generating takes only few lines )

Another thing I found, that is not based on Expat is LibXML, it seems that it's got cleaner interface then most other XML libs outthere, and claims to work way better with 'modern' stuff like XPath etc..

But getting back to XML::Mini, I like it very much, but may not fit all uses ( it doesen't do any DTD validation nor any other funky stuff )

         use XML::Mini::Document;
         my $xmlDoc = XML::Mini::Document->new();
         $xmlDoc->parse($string);
         my $xmlHash = $xmlDoc->toHash();
         my $c = $xmlHash->{'container'};
         my $body = $c->{'body'};
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