XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Name

EntityReference

Synopsis

EntityReference nodes appear within the document hierarchy wherever an XML general entity reference is embedded within the source document. Depending on the DOM implementation, a corresponding Entity object may exist in the entities collection of the docType attribute of the Document object. If such an entity exists, then the child nodes of both the Entity and EntityReference represent the replacement text associated with the given entity.

Java example

// Create a new entity reference
EntityReference ndER = doc.createEntityReference("my_entity");