[LIP] generating xml tags with a period(.) in generating xml tags with a period(.) in the tag name

Hi all,
 In ruby language, while  generating xml tags with a period(.) in
the tag name as given below, the xml builder gives me error, without
the period it works fine Could
anyone suggest me the solution. My rxml file is as follows:

xml.instruct! :xml, :version=>"1.0",
:encoding=>"UTF-8"
xml.methodResponse do
   xml.param do
     xml.Date.iso8601(@date.strftime("%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S"))
     end
 end

TIA

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