Calculate the display width of a string in Java

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.

And now for something completely different. The following assumes arial font, and makes a wild guess based on a linear interpolation of character vs width.

// Returns the size in PICA of the string, given space is 200 and 'W' is 1000.
// see https://p2p.wrox.com/access/32197-calculate-character-widths.html

static int picaSize(String s)
{
    // the following characters are sorted by width in Arial font
    String lookup = " .:,;'^`!|jl/\\i-()JfIt[]?{}sr*a\"ce_gFzLxkP+0123456789<=>~qvy$SbduEphonTBCXY#VRKZN%GUAHD@OQ&wmMW";
    int result = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < s.length(); ++i)
    {
        int c = lookup.indexOf(s.charAt(i));
        result += (c < 0 ? 60 : c) * 7 + 200;
    }
    return result;
}

Interesting, but perhaps not very practical.

Use the getWidth method in the following class:

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.geom.*;
import java.awt.font.*;

class StringMetrics {

  Font font;
  FontRenderContext context;

  public StringMetrics(Graphics2D g2) {

    font = g2.getFont();
    context = g2.getFontRenderContext();
  }

  Rectangle2D getBounds(String message) {

    return font.getStringBounds(message, context);
  }

  double getWidth(String message) {

    Rectangle2D bounds = getBounds(message);
    return bounds.getWidth();
  }

  double getHeight(String message) {

    Rectangle2D bounds = getBounds(message);
    return bounds.getHeight();
  }

}

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());

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