Calculate the display width of a string in Java

How to calculate the length (in pixels) of a string in Java?

Preferable without using Swing.

EDIT: I would like to draw the string using the drawString() in Java2D and use the length for word wrapping.

Solution 1:

If you just want to use AWT, then use Graphics.getFontMetrics (optionally specifying the font, for a non-default one) to get a FontMetrics and then FontMetrics.stringWidth to find the width for the specified string.

For example, if you have a Graphics variable called g, you'd use:

int width = g.getFontMetrics().stringWidth(text);

For other toolkits, you'll need to give us more information - it's always going to be toolkit-dependent.

Solution 2:

It doesn't always need to be toolkit-dependent or one doesn't always need use the FontMetrics approach since it requires one to first obtain a graphics object which is absent in a web container or in a headless enviroment.

I have tested this in a web servlet and it does calculate the text width.

import java.awt.Font;
import java.awt.font.FontRenderContext;
import java.awt.geom.AffineTransform;

...

String text = "Hello World";
AffineTransform affinetransform = new AffineTransform();     
FontRenderContext frc = new FontRenderContext(affinetransform,true,true);     
Font font = new Font("Tahoma", Font.PLAIN, 12);
int textwidth = (int)(font.getStringBounds(text, frc).getWidth());
int textheight = (int)(font.getStringBounds(text, frc).getHeight());

Add the necessary values to these dimensions to create any required margin.