Align Strings in columns in JTextArea
Question
I want to print Strings in JTextArea and align them properly. Its hard to explain so I will upload the screen shot of what I am trying to achieve.
So Strings printed in each line are printed from Paper object which has parameters (id, title, author, date, rank). The data is read from a text file and is stored in a LinkedList using loadPaper() function.
Then displayPapers() function is used to display content of the Paper object to the JTextArea. displayPapers() is listed below:
/** Print all Paper object present in the LinkedList paperList to textArea */
public void displayPapers(){
// clear textArea before displaying new content
displayTxtArea.setText("");
Paper currentPaper;
ListIterator<Paper> iter = paperList.listIterator();
while(iter.hasNext()){
currentPaper = iter.next();
String line = currentPaper.toString();
if("".equals(line)){
continue;
} // end if
String[] words = line.split(",");
displayTxtArea.append (" "
+ padString(words[0],30)
+ padString(words[1],30)
+ " "
+ padString(words[2],30)
+ " "
+ padString(words[3],30)
+ padString(words[4],30)
+ "\n");
System.out.println(words);
//displayTxtArea.append(currentPaper.toString());
} // end while
displayTxtArea.append(" Total " + noOfPapers + " entries!");
} // end showAllPaper
The padString() function adds spaces to the String so that all of them have same number of words. PadString() is listed below:
/** Add spaces to Strings so that all of the are of same number of characters
* @param str String to be padded
* @param n total number words String should be padded to
* @return str Padded string
*/
private String padString(String str, int n){
if(str.length() < n){
for(int j = str.length(); j < n; j++){
str += " ";
} // end for
} // end if
return str;
} // end padString
I have worked on this for a while but still cant get the solution. As you can notice the above picture not everything is perfectly aligned as intended.
How do I align them perfectly so that it looks nicer? Thanks.
4 answers
solution1
9 ACCPTED 2011-12-16 19:46:39
Output will be aligned "properly" in your JTextArea only if you use a mono-spaced font. "Andale Mono 14" for example would do the trick.
Also, in order to make your life easier and avoid the padding hell, use String.format with it's syntax .
String format = "%1$5s %2$-40s %3$-20s";
String someLine;
while (whatEver...) {
...
someLine = String.format(format, aNum, aName, aDate);
jTextArea1.append(someLine + "\n");
}
solution2
8 2011-12-16 11:42:21
Use a JTable instead (for what is apparently tabular information). See How To Use Tables for more details & working examples.
solution3
6 2011-12-16 11:49:24
You may use HTML with swing component or use JEditorPane .
JLabel jt=new JLabel();
jt.setText("<html>
<table border='1'>
<tr><th>No</th><th>Name</th></tr>
<tr><td>1</td><td>Mr.A</td></tr></table></html>");
solution4
1 2016-03-15 00:06:34
如果您的问题允许，您还可以更改 JTextArea 的字体
textArea.setFont(new Font("monospaced", Font.PLAIN, 12));
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