Question

I am calling web service from android but in in response it shows code instead of symbols.
e.g for > it shows &gt and for < it shows &lt. Why is this so?

Answer 1

There could be problem with Web service response which could be in String. because web service use SOAP protocol which wraps the response into a SOAP envelope and XML encoded.

As I had that problem while writing a Web-service and I returned array of objects instead of string which solved my problem.

public class Product
{
   public string ProductID { get; set; }
   public string ProductName { get; set; }
}

and

[WebMethod(Description="Return All Current Products")]
public Product[] ReturnProducts()
{
    DataTable dataTable = getProductsFromDB();
    List<Product> products = new List<Product>();

    if (dataTable.Rows.Count > 0)
    {
        foreach (DataRow objRow in dataTable.Rows)
        {
            Product product = new Product 
            {
                ProductID = objRow["ProductID"].ToString(),
                ProductName = objRow["ProductName"].ToString()
            };
            products.Add(product); 
        }
    }
    return product.ToArray();
}

First the return type of ReturnProducts() was string which was producing the problem you are facing after that I changed the code and return type to Product[] which solved my problem.

Hope it will help you.