The nodeName attribute that is inherited from
* Node contains the name of the entity.
*
An XML processor may choose to completely expand entities before the
* structure model is passed to the DOM; in this case there will be no
* EntityReference nodes in the document tree.
*
XML does not mandate that a non-validating XML processor read and
* process entity declarations made in the external subset or declared in
* parameter entities. This means that parsed entities declared in the
* external subset need not be expanded by some classes of applications, and
* that the replacement text of the entity may not be available. When the
* replacement text is available, the corresponding Entity node's child list
* represents the structure of that replacement value. Otherwise, the child
* list is empty.
*
DOM Level 3 does not support editing Entity nodes; if a
* user wants to make changes to the contents of an Entity,
* every related EntityReference node has to be replaced in the
* structure model by a clone of the Entity's contents, and
* then the desired changes must be made to each of those clones instead.
* Entity nodes and all their descendants are readonly.
*
An Entity node does not have any parent.
*
Note: If the entity contains an unbound namespace prefix, the
* namespaceURI of the corresponding node in the
* Entity node subtree is null. The same is true
* for EntityReference nodes that refer to this entity, when
* they are created using the createEntityReference method of
* the Document interface.
*
See also the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification.
*/
public interface Entity extends Node {
/**
* The public identifier associated with the entity if specified, and
* null otherwise.
*/
public String getPublicId();
/**
* The system identifier associated with the entity if specified, and
* null otherwise. This may be an absolute URI or not.
*/
public String getSystemId();
/**
* For unparsed entities, the name of the notation for the entity. For
* parsed entities, this is null.
*/
public String getNotationName();
/**
* An attribute specifying the encoding used for this entity at the time
* of parsing, when it is an external parsed entity. This is
* null if it an entity from the internal subset or if it
* is not known.
* @since DOM Level 3
*/
public String getInputEncoding();
/**
* An attribute specifying, as part of the text declaration, the encoding
* of this entity, when it is an external parsed entity. This is
* null otherwise.
* @since DOM Level 3
*/
public String getXmlEncoding();
/**
* An attribute specifying, as part of the text declaration, the version
* number of this entity, when it is an external parsed entity. This is
* null otherwise.
* @since DOM Level 3
*/
public String getXmlVersion();
}