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Asked: 2026-05-14T07:17:23+00:00

I need to add annotations to existing HTML documents – best in the form

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I need to add “annotations” to existing HTML documents – best in the form of string property values I can read & write by name.

Apparently (to me), meta elements in the header seem to be the common way – i.e. adding/modifying elements like

<head>
  <meta name="unique-id_property-name"  content="property-value"/>
  ...
</head>

Question 1: Ist that “acceptable” / ok, or is there a better way to add meta data?

I have a little previous experience with getting/mut(il)ating HTML contents through the document in an web browser control. For this task, I’ve already loaded the HTML document into a HTMLDocument object, but I’m not sure how to go on:

// what I have:

IHTMLDocument2Ptr doc;
doc.CreateInstance(__uuidof(HTMLDocument));
IPersistFile pf = doc;
pf->Load(fileName, STGM_READ);  

// ... what now?

Questions 2: Should I be using anything else than HTMLDocument?

Questions 3..N:
How do I get the head element?
How do I get the value of a meta element with a given name?
How do I set the value of a meta element (adding the item if and only if it doesn’t exist yet)?

doc->all returns a collection of all tags, which I can enumerate even though count returns 0. I could scan that for head, then scan that for all meta where the name starts with a certain string, etc. – but this feels very clumsy.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I do not have enough experience working with HTML using C++.
    I am not sure if this answers your question, but you could do the following

    1. enum all elements using doc->all
    2. for each IHtmlElement you can compare the tagname to meta (use IHtmlElement::get_tagName)
    3. for these meta tags you can get and set property using IHtmlElement::getAttribute and setAttribute methods)

    Or

    1. Write a Javascript function that accepts a property name and value. This should be able to update the meta tag you have
    2. You can then get the script object using IHtmlDocument2::get_script as IDispatch
    3. Use this script dispatch to Invoke your javascript function.
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