Return xml from an Action to the pipeline?

[Lachlan Paterson]

I have a pipeline that is successfully producing web pages. I would like to create a report using Jasper Reports (which is just a simple java library) and then insert that report back into one of my web pages. Jasper Reports can output to xml so this should be possible.

I am open to suggestions for how to do this. If put the creation of the xml report into an Action, It seems like I should be able to return the xml and have it merge back into the pipeline. An Action returns a Map - and I can put whatever I want into that Map, so I thought about putting the xml result in there and then accessing it the pipeline. I'm how I'm not sure to get at it in the pipeline, or how to merge it into the xml that was already in the pipeline before I called the Action.

So, Jasper Reports aside, my question (assuming the above method is sound) is a more general 2 part question:

1) How do I return xml from an Action and access it in the pipeline?
2) How to I merge that xml document into the one that the pipeline is processing?