Modifying CakePHP's XML Helper

The current XML Helper in CakePHP doesn't give you the ability to specify if you want the whitespace to be significant or non-significant. Normally it wouldn't matter, but I'm working with a strict API that requires certain values to have no excess characters surrounding the value (no \n's or \t's). I'd like to modify the Cake source to support this ability, and if anyone has done this before and has any tips or advise on how to start, I'd appreciate it. Actually I believe the most helpful thi开发者_开发百科ng would be if someone has a flowchart of how Cake comes together (ie: starts in index.php and flows through router.php or what-not). I'd like to get a better understanding of how Cake is constructed (even from a high level).

Thanks!

If you want to change one of the built-in helpers, just copy it into your /app/views/helpers/ directory and edit it from there. The version in your app will be used instead of the original.