Really simple XML parsing ripped from Crack which ripped it from Merb.
Nori was created to bypass the stale development of Crack, improve its XML parser
and fix certain issues.

parser = Nori.new
parser.parse("<tag>This is the contents</tag>")
# => { 'tag' => 'This is the contents' }

Nori supports pluggable parsers and ships with both REXML and Nokogiri implementations.
It defaults to Nokogiri since v2.0.0, but you can change it to use REXML via:

Nori.new(:parser => :rexml)  # or :nokogiri

Make sure Nokogiri is in your LOAD_PATH when parsing XML, because Nori tries to load it
when it's needed.

Besides regular typecasting, Nori features somewhat "advanced" typecasting:

• "true" and "false" String values are converted to TrueClass and FalseClass.
• String values matching xs:time, xs:date and xs:dateTime are converted to Time, Date and DateTime objects.

You can disable this feature via:

Nori.new(:advanced_typecasting => false)

Nori can strip the namespaces from your XML tags. This feature might raise
problems and is therefore disabled by default. Enable it via:

Nori.new(:strip_namespaces => true)

Nori lets you specify a custom formula to convert XML tags to Hash keys.
Let me give you an example:

parser = Nori.new(:convert_tags_to => lambda { |tag| tag.snakecase.to_sym })

xml = '<userResponse><accountStatus>active</accountStatus></userResponse>'
parser.parse(xml)  # => { :user_response => { :account_status => "active" }

Nori will automatically convert dashes in tag names to underscores. For example:

parser = Nori.new
parser.parse('<any-tag>foo bar</any-tag>')  # => { "any_tag" => "foo bar" }

You can control this behavior with the :convert_dashes_to_underscores option:

parser = Nori.new(:convert_dashes_to_underscores => false)
parser.parse('<any-tag>foo bar</any-tag>') # => { "any-tag" => "foo bar" }