DTD General Entities
You may remember the lesson on creating entities. The entity we created in that lesson is known as a General Entity Reference. A general entity reference is used in the target XML document/s.
This lesson refreshes our memory on how to declare a general entity. The following lesson introduces another type of entity; the parameter entity.
Syntax
The <!ENTITY> declaration for general entities has the following syntax:
<!ENTITY name definition>
You can also declare external general entities. This enables you to use an entity from a remote file. You declare external general entities using the following syntax:
Private:
<!ENTITY name SYSTEM uri>
Public:
<!ENTITY name PUBLIC FPI uri>
Example
<!ENTITY author "Homer Flinstone">
After declaring the entity named "author", we can now use it in our XML document:
<books>
<book>
<name>Life as a cartoon character</name>
<author>&author;</author>
</book>
</book>