I''m trying to size a JTextArea according to the text that is occupy it.
The width I have from another JPanel, but the height I can't get right.
I need to get the number of lines that the text will occupy and then set the size accordingly.
As it is, I've hard-coded the number of lines, even so, that doesn't work. e.g. if i set # of lines = 5, it still shows only 2, though the dlg box can be resized by hand to show them all.
Any suggestions?

public class TextPanel extends JPanel {
    private final Insets insets =  new Insets(10,20,10,20); // top, left, bottom, right
    private JTextArea textArea;
    private FontMetrics metrics;
    private double widthButtonPanel;
     * @param message
     * @param dimension dimensions of button panel
    public TextPanel(String message, Dimension dimension) {
	 // get bg color of panel so we can set bg of text area to same color
    	Color color = getBackground(); 
       TextArea = new JTextArea (message);
	textArea.setLineWrap(true);
	textArea.setWrapStyleWord(true);
	textArea.setBackground(color);
       TextArea.setMargin(insets);
	// this will be width of the text area
	// height can't be set until painting it because we need to get the text size
       widthButtonPanel = dimension.getWidth();
	add(textArea);
     * override default insets
    public Insets getInsets() 
    	return insets;
    @Override
     * override in order to set height of text area
     * @param g Graphics 
    public void paintComponent(Graphics g)
    	// automatically called when repaint
    	super.paintComponent(g);
	Font font = this.getFont();
    	Graphics graphics = this.getGraphics();
    	// get metrics from the graphics
    	metrics = graphics.getFontMetrics(font);
	// get the height of a line of text in this font and render context
       // line height must be that of text only, not space above and below
    	final int HEIGHT_SPACE = 7; // empirically derived
	int heightTextAreaLine = metrics.getHeight() + HEIGHT_SPACE;
	// set height
	final int numberOfLines = 5;
        // truncate double, doesn't matter because it is *.0 anyway
	Dimension newDimension = new Dimension((int)widthButtonPanel, heightTextAreaLine * numberOfLines);
        TextArea.setPreferredSize(newDimension);
        //textArea.setMaximumSize(newDimension);
        TextArea.setMinimumSize(newDimension);
}

Edited by: allelopath on Jan 19, 2009 2:33 PM