site structure

I'm sure i used to be able to do this but cant find anything relating to it, maybe I'm thinking of something different....anyway, what I want to do is pull the site structure out eg:
parent 1
parent 2
     p2child 1
     p2child 2
parent 3
     p3child 1
     p3child 2
parent 4

etc etc, if I get the sitemap xml, its just flat , but I need it with child nodes, or at least some way of querying the db and getting the structure from there so I can build my own xml file which I can then use in the (custom)navigation. Is this possible

thanks
tim

[edit] this is dynamic btw, so cant be hardcoded....[/edit]

apologies, was full of cold yesterday with a banging headache and couldn't think of anything and evidently having a thick moment....anyway grabbed the SiteMapProvider and started at the top and whizzed down through it and hey presto done.

t