JavaFX Text

In some of the cases, we need to provide the text based information on the interface of our application. JavaFX library provides a class named javafx.scene.text.Text for this purpose. This class provides various methods to alter various properties of the text. We just need to instantiate this class to implement text in our application.

Properties

The properties of JavaFX Text are described in the table below.

Property	Description	Setter Methods
boundstype	This property is of object type. It determines the way in which the bounds of the text is being calculated.	setBoundsType(TextBoundsType value)
font	Font of the text.	setFont(Font value)
fontsmoothingType	Defines the requested smoothing type for the font.	setFontSmoothingType(FontSmoothingType value)
linespacing	Vertical space in pixels between the lines. It is double type property.	setLineSpacing(double spacing)
strikethrough	This is a boolean type property. We can put a line through the text by setting this property to true.	setStrikeThrough(boolean value)
textalignment	Horizontal Text alignment	setTextAlignment(TextAlignment value)
textorigin	Origin of text coordinate system in local coordinate system.	setTextOrigin(VPos value)
text	It is a string type property. It defines the text string which is to be displayed.	setText(String value)
underline	It is a boolean type property. We can underline the text by setting this property to true.	setUnderLine(boolean value)
wrappingwidth	Width limit for the text from where the text is to be wrapped. It is a double type property.	setWrappingWidth(double value)
x	X coordinate of the text	setX(double value)
y	Y coordinate of the text	setY(double value)

Creating a text node

The class javafx.scene.text.Text needs to be instantiated in order to create the text node. Use the setter method setText(string) to set the string as a text for the text class object. Follow the syntax given below to instantiate the Text class.

Text <text_Object> = new Text(); 
text.setText(<string-text>); 

Example

The following example illustrates the Text class. Here, we are not setting the positions for the text therefore the text will be displayed to the centre of the screen.

package application;
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.layout.StackPane;
import javafx.scene.text.Text;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
public class TextExample extends Application{
@Override
public void start(Stage primaryStage) throws Exception {
	// TODO Auto-generated method stub
	Text text = new Text();
	text.setText("Hello !! Welcome to JavaTPoint");
	StackPane root = new StackPane();
	Scene scene = new Scene(root,300,400);
	root.getChildren().add(text);
	primaryStage.setScene(scene);
	primaryStage.setTitle("Text Example");
	primaryStage.show();
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
	launch(args);
	
}
}

Font and position of the Text

JavaFX enables us to apply various fonts to the text nodes. We just need to set the property font of the Text class by using the setter method setFont(). This method accepts the object of Font class. The class Font belongs the package javafx.scene.text. It contains a static method named font(). This returns an object of Font type which will be passed as an argument into the setFont() method of Text class. The method Font.font() accepts the following parameters.

Family: it represents the family of the font. It is of string type and should be an appropriate font family present in the system.
Weight: this Font class property is for the weight of the font. There are 9 values which can be used as the font weight. The values are FontWeight.BLACK, BOLD, EXTRA_BOLD, EXTRA_LIGHT, LIGHT, MEDIUM, NORMAL, SEMI_BOLD, THIN.
Posture: this Font class property represents the posture of the font. It can be either FontPosture.ITALIC or FontPosture.REGULAR.
Size: this is a double type property. It is used to set the size of the font.

The Syntax of the method setFont() is given below.

<text_object>.setFont(Font.font(<String font_family>, <FontWeight>, <FontPosture>, <FontSize>)

Example

package application;
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.scene.Group;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.text.Font;
import javafx.scene.text.FontPosture;
import javafx.scene.text.FontWeight;
import javafx.scene.text.Text;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
public class TextExample extends Application{
@Override
public void start(Stage primaryStage) throws Exception {
	// TODO Auto-generated method stub
	Text text = new Text();
	
	text.setX(100);
	text.setY(20);
	text.setFont(Font.font("Abyssinica SIL",FontWeight.BOLD,FontPosture.REGULAR,20));
	text.setText("Welcome to JavaTPoint");
	Group root = new Group();
	Scene scene = new Scene(root,500,200);
	root.getChildren().add(text);
	primaryStage.setScene(scene);
	primaryStage.setTitle("Text Example");
	primaryStage.show();
}
publicstaticvoid main(String[] args) {
	launch(args);
	
}
}

Applying Stroke and Color to Text

Stroke means the padding at the boundary of the text. JavaFX allows us to apply stroke and colors to the text. javafx.scene.text.Text class provides a method named setStroke() which accepts the Paint class object as an argument. Just pass the color which will be painted on the stroke. We can also set the width of the stroke by passing a width value of double type into setStrokeWidth() method. To set the color of the Text, javafx.scene.text.Text class provides another method named setFill(). We just need to pass the color which is to be filled in the text.

Example

The following example illustrates the functions of above mentioned methods.

package application;
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.scene.Group;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.paint.Color;
import javafx.scene.text.Font;
import javafx.scene.text.FontPosture;
import javafx.scene.text.FontWeight;
import javafx.scene.text.Text;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
public class TextExample extends Application{
@Override
publicvoid start(Stage primaryStage) throws Exception {
	// TODO Auto-generated method stub
	Text text = new Text();
	
	text.setX(100);
	text.setY(20);
	text.setFont(Font.font("Abyssinica SIL",FontWeight.BOLD,FontPosture.REGULAR,25));
	text.setFill(Color.BLUE);// setting colour of the text to blue 
	text.setStroke(Color.BLACK); // setting the stroke for the text  
	text.setStrokeWidth(1); // setting stroke width to 2 
	text.setText("Welcome to JavaTPoint"); 
	Group root = new Group();
	Scene scene = new Scene(root,500,200);
	root.getChildren().add(text);
	primaryStage.setScene(scene);
	primaryStage.setTitle("Text Example");
	primaryStage.show();
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
	launch(args);
	
}
}

Applying Decorations to the text

We can apply the decorations to the text by setting the properties strikethrough and underline of javafx.scene.text.Text class. The syntax of both the methods is given below.

<TextObject>.setStrikeThrough(Boolean value) //pass true to put a line across the text
<TextObject>.setUnderLine(Boolean value) //pass true to underline the text

We can also apply JavaFX Effects to the Text class objects. We will discuss JavaFX effects in the upcoming chapters.

Example

package application;
import javafx.application.Application;
import javafx.scene.Group;
import javafx.scene.Scene;
import javafx.scene.text.Font;
import javafx.scene.text.Text;
import javafx.stage.Stage;
public class TextExample extends Application{
@Override
public void start(Stage primaryStage) throws Exception {
	// TODO Auto-generated method stub
	Text text = new Text();
	
	text.setX(100);
	text.setY(40);
	text.setFont(Font.font("Liberation Serif",25));
	text.setText("Hello !!"); 
	text.setStrikethrough(true);
	Text text1=new Text();
	text1.setX(100);
	text1.setY(140);
	text1.setText("Welcome to JavaTPoint!");
	text1.setFont(Font.font("Liberation Serif",25));
	text1.setUnderline(true);
	Group root = new Group();
	Scene scene = new Scene(root,500,200);
	root.getChildren().addAll(text,text1);
	primaryStage.setScene(scene);
	primaryStage.setTitle("Text Example");
	primaryStage.show();
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
	launch(args);
	
}
}