Localhost is forbidden when using IP address instead of ‘localhost’

I think with your first question, you're asking how to contact your laptop's Apache web server from the Android device.

Since you set up the virtual hotspot on your Windows 7 machine, that is an additional interface that your laptop is using, which means that interface has an IP address of its own. On your laptop, go to command line and do ipconfig, and look through the results for something like Virtual Wifi Adapter and see what IP it's showing. That's the IP that the Android device will use to reach your laptop, since they're on the same network.

Regarding the second question, you'll have to consult XAMPP documentation and your configs to make sure the Apache server is listening for connections outside of localhost and to see which port it is listening on.

I'm assuming the phone is creating a LAN when you say you are creating an hotspot with it, so you do have a router it's your phone.

In simple words you need to do two things.

1. make the web service accessible from your LAN You can check this by using another device connected to the hotspot, and trying to access

<private IP address of server>:<port used by the server>,

ex 192.168.1.3:8080

2. check your hotspot is redirecting the traffic from "the outside" to your local server. This is the tricky part, it's going to depend on your mobile phone etc

If using a android phone mabe check this out: link to google play

Then check from another device connected to the internet:

<public IP address>:<Public Port configured to be forwarded>,