In my MUD project I am currently saving all of my rooms to one big text file. This is bad for a number of reasons, but I am having trouble figuring out a way to fix it. Currently a saved room structure looks something like this:

1007 = object(".0")
                .0
                        type = /room
                        name = "Stairwell in the Academy"
                        desc = "Study continues upstairs."
                        sector = 0
                        luminosity = 1
                        flags = 2
                        east = 1004
                        east_door = object(".0")
                                .0
                                        type = /door/wood
                                        key_id = "newbie key"
                                        flags = 5
                        contents = list(object(".0"))
                                .0
                                        type = /action/exit
                                        udesc = ""
                                        odesc = "has arrived from downstairs."
                                        long_desc = "Some stairs"
                                        name = "up"
                                        desc = "ascends the stairs."
                                        dest = 1008

This is about as complex as the rooms get, since it has both doors and room actions. I figured it would probably be best to convert this to an XML system. But I am having problems with two areas:

1) How to organize the code to save rooms into files by area and read areas. I am guessing it would be best to do this starting with some kind of list file that lists all the areas to be read.

2) How to write/read room contents in XML format. Deadron's XML lib is easy enough to say up to read/write simple vars like name, desc, etc. but something like a contents save eludes me. I am guessing I would need to set up an XML routine for the objs and just call it per obj?