XML::LibXML::NodeList isn't XML::LibXML::Node.

You are probably using findnodes in scalar context.

my @nodes = $doc->findnodes(...);  # Return all matching nodes
my $nodes = $doc->findnodes(...);  # Ditto, as a NodeList
[download]

If you want the first match node, call findnodes in list context.

my ($node) = $doc->findnodes(...);  # Get first matching node.
[download]

If you want to visit every matching node, the following is probably more what you want:

for my $node ($doc->findnodes(...)) {
   ...
}
[download]

That was it... I had my context wrong for the findnodes function:

Old:

my $status = $dom->findnodes("...");
my $msg = $dom->findnodes("...");
.
.
print $status->getFirstChild()->data, "\n";
print $msg->getFirstChild()->data, "\n";
[download]

New:

my ($status) = $dom->findnodes("...");
my ($msg) = $dom->findnodes("...");
.
.
print $status->getFirstChild()->nodeValue(), "\n";
print $msg->getFirstChild()->nodeValue(), "\n";
[download]

Thanks, everyone, for all the help.

I'm guessing

->getFirstChild()->nodeValue()
[download]

could be replaced with

->textContent()
[download]

You're presumably calling it on the wrong object type.  What does your code/xml look like?

Here's a simple example using getFirstChild that works:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::LibXML;

my $parser = XML::LibXML->new();
my $doc = $parser->parse_fh(\*DATA);

for my $elem ( $doc->getElementsByTagName('foo') ) {
    my $val = $elem->getFirstChild()->nodeValue();

    print "$val\n";   # Foo1 Foo2
}  

__DATA__
<?xml version = "1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<doc>
  <foo>Foo1<bar>Bar</bar></foo>
  <foo>Foo2</foo>
</doc>
[download]