How to turn those < to < and > to > from StringBuffer.toString, struts2 and sarissa

Hi; I have a search string which is generated by action and put in request scope. Then in the result page, I put this string in jsp. So that I could use Sarissa to parse it as XML. The problem, when search string is returned, it is not <items><item><name>somename</name></item></items>, it is something like &lt;items&gt;&lt;item&gt;&lt;name&gt; ...

In Sarissa, when I read xtring by document.getElementById("xmlDocument") and then I could not parse it. It is not a valid XML. Does someone know how to get string with '<','>', not '&lt;' and '&gt;'.

My action codes

public String execute(){
            List<Item> items = registrationService.searchItem(getSearchQuery());
            String xmlString = generateXML(items);
            request.put("xmlString", xmlString);
            return "searchResult";
      }

      private String generateXML(List<Item> items) {
            int size = items.size();
            StringBuffer xmlString = new StringBuffer("<items>");
            for(int i=0;i<size;i++){
               xmlString.append("<item>");       
               Item item = (Item)items.get(i);      
               xmlString.append("<name>"+item.getName()+"</name>");
               xmlString.append("<price>"+item.getInitprice()+"</price>");
               xmlString.append("</item>");
            }
            xmlString.append("</items>");
            return xmlString.toString();
      }

And my javascript is as follows:
                     function init()
         {
          // create the xml document object
             oXmlDoc = Sarissa.getDomDocument();
             oXmlDoc.async = false;
             var xmlString = document.getElementById("xmlDocument").innerHTML;
             alert(xmlString);
             oXmlDoc = (new DOMParser()).parseFromString(xmlString, "text/xml");

             // create the xml document object
             oXslDoc = Sarissa.getDomDocument();
             oXslDoc.async = false;
             oXslDoc.load("item.xsl");                //
             showTable('NAME', '1', showCounter,'ascending'); //
        }