docs/extensions/entity-reference-extension.mdx
---
hide_title: true
title: 'EntityReferenceExtension'
---
import Highlights from '../../website/extension-examples/extension-entity-reference/highlights';
# `EntityReferenceExtension`
## Summary
This extension allows to reference external entities in the content of your editor.
### Use cases
This extension enables use cases like:
- **Comment** content in the editor: A piece of text points to a comment (external entity).
- **Highlight** content: A piece of text points to a highlight (external entity), which can have shared meta data like color, tags, etc.
### Comparision to similar extensions
There are multiple Remirror extensions that serve similar use cases. Here is an overview when to use which:
- [`TextHighlightExtension`](./text-highlight-extension): Suitable for simple highlighting of text with a color
- [`EntityReferenceExtension`](./entity-reference-extension): Use when the marked text has meta data, e.g. the text of a comment or tags assigned to highlighted text
- [`AnnotationExtension`](./annotation-extension): Generally avoid using annotations, and use instead `EntityReferenceExtension`. See this [blog post](/blog/annotation-issues) for an in-depth discussion of issues with annotations.
## Usage
### Installation
This extension is installed for you when you install the main `remirror` package.
You can use the imports in the following way:
```ts
import { EntityReferenceExtension } from 'remirror/extensions';
```
The extension is provided by the `@remirror/extension-entity-reference` package.
### Examples
<Highlights />
## API
- [EntityReferenceExtension](../api/extension-entity-reference)