DOMEntityReference objects may be inserted into the structure model when an entity reference is in the source document, or when the user wishes to insert an entity reference. Note that character references and references to predefined entities are considered to be expanded by the HTML or XML processor so that characters are represented by their Unicode equivalent rather than by an entity reference. Moreover, the XML processor may completely expand references to entities while building the structure model, instead of providing EntityReference objects. If it does provide such objects, then for a given EntityReference node, it may be that there is no Entity node representing the referenced entity; but if such an Entity exists, then the child list of the EntityReference node is in general the same as that of the Entity node. They may differ when an entity contains an unbound namespace prefix. In such a case, because the namespace prefix resolution depends on where the entity reference is, the descendants of the EntityReference node may be bound to different namespace URIs.

As with the Entity node, all descendants of the EntityReference are readonly.