JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, Fourth Edition

Name

EntityReference — a reference to an entity defined in an XML DTD

Availability

DOM Level 1 XML

Inherits from/Overrides

Node → EntityReference

Description

This infrequently used interface represents a reference from an XML document to an entity defined in the document’s DTD. Character entities and predefined entities such as < are always expanded in XML and HTML documents, and EntityReference nodes never appear in HTML documents, so programmers working exclusively with HTML documents never need to use this interface. Note also that some XML parsers expand all entity references. Documents created by such parsers do not contain EntityReference nodes.

This interface defines no properties or methods of its own. The inherited nodeName property specifies the name of the referenced entity. The entities property of the DocumentType interface provides a way to look up the Entity object with that name. Note, however, that the DocumentType may not contain an Entity node with the specified name (because, for example, nonvalidating XML parsers are not required to parse the “external subset” of the DTD). In this case, the EntityReference has no children. On the other hand, if the DocumentType does contain an Entity node with the specified name, the child nodes of the EntityReference are copies of the child nodes of the Entity node and represent the content of the entity. Like Entity nodes, EntityReference nodes and their descendants are read-only and cannot be edited or modified.

See Also