Getting Raw Request XML

I'm writing a RESTful services application that receives XML in its POST and PUT requests. It's great that Rails parses out the XML into the params hash, but occasionally I'd rather deal with the raw request XML instead. How do I get at that?

Also, when writing functional tests for controllers is there a way to send in the raw XML instead of the hash? In other words, something like this:

def test_create   post :xml => '<person><first-name>bob</first-name><last-name>smith</ last-name></person>'

Thanks!

Steve