Question

I have a WCF web service that returns a string to a Java based client.

<OperationContract()>
Function SomeSvc(ByVal fileString As String) As String

fileString is a bunch of xml. When the client gets the response my xmlstring is encoded as text.

 <s:Body u:Id="_0">
    <SomeSvcResponse xmlns="http://tempuri.org/">
      <SomeSvcResult>&gt; &lt;/ns2:FailureMessage&gt; &lt;/ns:BOD&gt; &lt;/ns:ConfirmDataArea&gt; &lt;/ns:Confirm&gt;
      </SomeSvcResult>
    </SomeSvcResponse>
  </s:Body>
</s:Envelope>

Why is my service returning encoded text instead of xml?

Answer 1

The service encodes your data because you defined return value as String. If you want to return XML use XElement instead.