Well, figured out a solution to parsing xml. It's not really pretty, but it works. Basically we just convert the incoming xml into a gread compatible format then use gread :-D If someone has a more elegant solution, please let me know. module ParseXml where import IO import Char import List import Maybe import Data.Generics hiding (Unit) import Text.XML.HXT.Arrow hiding (when) data Config = Config{ name :: String, age :: Int } --data Config = Config{ age :: Int } deriving( Data, Show, Typeable, Ord, Eq, Read ) createConfig = Config "qsdfqsdf" 3 --createConfig = Config 3 gshow' :: Data a => a -> String gshow' t = fromMaybe (showConstr(toConstr t)) (cast t) -- helper function from http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/haskell-web.html introspectData :: Data a => a -> [(String, String)] introspectData a = zip fields (gmapQ gshow' a) where fields = constrFields $ toConstr a -- function to create xml string from single-layer Haskell data type xmlSerialize object = "<" ++ show(toConstr object) ++ ">" ++ foldr (\(a,b) x -> x ++ "<" ++ a ++ ">" ++ b ++ "") "" ( introspectData object ) ++ "" -- parse xml to HXT tree, and obtain the value of node "fieldname" -- returns a string getValue xml fieldname | length(resultlist) > 0 = Just (head resultlist) | otherwise = Nothing where resultlist = (runLA ( constA xml >>> xread >>> deep ( hasName fieldname ) >>> getChildren >>> getText ))[] -- parse templateobject to get list of field names -- apply these to xml to get list of values -- return (fieldnames list, value list) xmlToGShowFormat :: Data a => String -> a -> String xmlToGShowFormat xml templateobject = go where mainconstructorname = (showConstr $ toConstr templateobject) fields = constrFields $ toConstr templateobject values = map ( \fieldname -> getValue xml fieldname ) fields datatypes = gmapQ (dataTypeOf) templateobject constrs = gmapQ (toConstr) templateobject datatypereps = gmapQ (dataTypeRep . dataTypeOf) templateobject fieldtogshowformat (value,datatyperep) = case datatyperep of IntRep -> "(" ++ fromJust value ++ ")" _ -> show(fromJust value) formattedfieldlist = map (fieldtogshowformat) (zip values datatypereps) go = "(" ++ mainconstructorname ++ " " ++ (concat $ intersperse " " formattedfieldlist ) ++ ")" xmlDeserialize xml templateobject = fst $ head $ gread( xmlToGShowFormat xml templateobject) dotest = xmlDeserialize (xmlSerialize createConfig) createConfig :: Config dotest' = xmlDeserialize ("<Config><age>12</age><name>test name!</name></Config>") createConfig :: Config