$
$
$ cat data.xml
<foo>
 <data>
   <testnumber>1100</testnumber>
   <cause>battery short circuit</cause>
   <description>check proper connection</description>
 </data>
 <data>
   <testnumber>1200</testnumber>
   <cause>Some other cause</cause>
   <description>Some other description</description>
 </data>
</foo>
$
$
$ cat -n parsedata.pl
    1  #!perl -w
    2  use XML::Parser;
    3  my $tag;
    4  my $key;
    5  my %testnums;
    6  my $str;
    7
    8  sub handle_start {
    9    my ($parseinst, $element, %attrs) = @_;
   10    $tag = $element;
   11  }
   12  sub handle_end {
   13    my ($parseinst, $element, %attrs) = @_;
   14    $tag = "";
   15  }
   16  sub handle_char {
   17    my ($parseinst, $data) = @_;
   18    if (defined $tag and $tag eq "testnumber") {
   19      $key = $data;
   20    } elsif (defined $tag and $tag eq "description") {
   21      $testnums{$key} = $data;
   22    }
   23  }
   24
   25  {
   26    local $/=undef;
   27    open (FH, "<", "data.xml") or die "Can't open file: $!";
   28    $str = <FH>;
   29    close (FH) or die "Can't close file: $!";
   30  }
   31  $p1 = XML::Parser->new(Handlers => {Start => \&handle_start,
   32                                      End   => \&handle_end,
   33                                      Char  => \&handle_char});
   34  $p1->parse($str);
   35
   36  # print the hash
   37  while (my ($k, $v) = each %testnums) {
   38    print "Key = $k, Value = $v\n";
   39  }
$
$ perl parsedata.pl
Key = 1200, Value = Some other description
Key = 1100, Value = check proper connection
$
$