help with this xml message structure

[spinnergy]

I am sending the server an xml message containing the information to add a new user to the application. The items that will be transferred are:

firstname, lastname, username, password, email, and groups

Where "groups" may be one or many, depending on how many groups the user will be a member of.

I cannot decide the "best" way to code the xml so that the server side parsing routine can logically extract the data. Here is my approach (please suggest alternatives)

<request action="add_user">
<request_item label="firstname" value="john" />
<request_item label="lastname" value="john" />
<request_item label="username" value="bigjohn" />
<request_item label="password" value="bigbadjohn" />
<request_item label="email" value="john@hotmail.com" />
<request_item label="groups">
<group value="1" />
<group value="2" />
<group value="3" />
</request_item>
</request>

[tupps]

usually I go for a container XML tag when I have a collection of items eg:

< user>
< name>Bill< /name>
< email>billyg@microsoft.com< /email>
< groups>
< group name="World Domination Newbies" \>
< group name="Advanced Business Tactics" \>
< group name="Bucket Loads of Money -- How to spend" \>
< /groups>
< /user>

This way you can parse through your groups collection and know that all the child nodes (which are whitespace :-) are going to be group information.

It also maps to an object oriented way of doing things where each group item will be stored as an array or collection.

Thanks

Luke