ActionScript 3.0 :: Setting Up Expanding XML Tree Menu And Linking Button Listeners?

I'm making an application that uses a branching tree type structure, and need to get the buttons to refer to and be able to manipulate individual XML nodes. I tried putting a button reference directly in the XML and setting the reference to that node with the event data, but it didn't work, because the XML didn't recognize the event.currentTarget as an actual button, so couldn't find the node that contained the click target. I assume there is a standard way to do this, since it's so common. Just for clarity, the tree will basically look like this:

PrimaryNode1
Subnode1
Subnode1a

[code]....

I need to be able to keep track of which subnode goes where for determining other data as well as graphically positioning the node and subnode data); PrimaryNode2 etc., with add and expand buttons. I can't set static references, since all of the nodes are added through the program depending on if they're needed. I tried doing this with multidimensional arrays, but since I want each level to be theoretically (but not practically) infinite with infinite subnodes, checking through the arrays got kind of messy. I just figured there has to be a standard way to set this up, since it's so common.