CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javajavafxfontstextareajavafx-8
E. Muuli
E. Muuli

Reputation: 4340

Automatically adjust the width of a JavaFX TextArea

So, I've been working on a dynamical UI, which consists of TextAreas, but the thing is that the inputs to TextAreas come from the database and therefore are with different lengths. And I must also make the TextAreas dynamic depending on the length of the strings from database. And this is a difficult task because the length of the strings doesn't automatically tell its length in pixels. So, for example strings:

a)"iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii"

b)"MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM"

Those two strings consist of 70 letters but their length in pixels is completely different. And I need to make sure that the TextArea gets its width based on the string's length in pixels.

I have tried to use something like this:

int textwidth = (int) font.getStringBounds(ta.getText(), frc).getWidth();

But it gives me errors, because the font is the following:

textLabel.getFont()
-> Font[name=System Regular, family=System, style=Regular, size=12.0]

But using this font in the previous getStringBounds method it gives me errors:

Cannot resolve method 'getStringBounds(java.lang.String, java.awt.font.FontRenderContext)'

Any help would be highly appriciated. I can provide more information if required.

Thanks in advance!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3701

Answers (1)

James_D
James_D

Reputation: 209684

You can measure the size of some text by creating a Text object, placing it in a pane (e.g. a StackPane) and calling layout() on the pane, then get the layout bounds of the text. Set the font to the same font as you want to use in the text area.

The only remaining issue is that the text area needs some padding for its border, etc, the following code example just uses a fixed padding (established via trial-and-error) but works well enough. You can probably improve on this if needed.

Type something in the text field and press enter; it will update the text and size of the text area:

import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.geometry.Insets;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.control.TextArea;
import javafx.scene.control.TextField;
import javafx.scene.layout.Priority;
import javafx.scene.layout.StackPane;
import javafx.scene.layout.VBox;
import javafx.scene.text.Text;
import javafx.stage.Stage;

public class SizeTextAreaToString extends Application {

    @Override
    public void start(Stage primaryStage) {
        TextField enterField = new TextField();
        TextArea textArea = new TextArea();
        textArea.setPrefRowCount(1);

        enterField.setOnAction(e -> sizeTextAreaToText(textArea, enterField.getText()));

        VBox root = new VBox(5, enterField, textArea);
        VBox.setVgrow(textArea, Priority.NEVER);
        root.setPadding(new Insets(5));
        primaryStage.setScene(new Scene(root, 400, 400));
        primaryStage.show();
    }

    private void sizeTextAreaToText(TextArea textArea, String text) {
        Text t = new Text(text);
        t.setFont(textArea.getFont());
        StackPane pane = new StackPane(t);
        pane.layout();
        double width = t.getLayoutBounds().getWidth();
        double padding = 20 ;
        textArea.setMaxWidth(width+padding);
        textArea.setText(text);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        launch(args);
    }
}

Upvotes: 3

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