How to word wrap text in JLabel?

Question

How can text like "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" which exceeds the width of the JLabel be wrapped? I have tried enclosing the text into html tags but no luck. Please give your suggestions.

Answer 1

A common approach is to not use a JLabel and instead use a JTextArea with word-wrap and line-wrap turned on. You could then decorate the JTextArea to make it look like a JLabel (border, background color, etc.). [Edited to include line-wrap for completeness per DSquare's comment]

Another approach is to use HTML in your label, as seen here. The caveats there are

1. You may have to take care of certain characters that HTML may interpret/convert from plain text

2. Calling myLabel.getText() will now contain HTML (with possibly escaped and/or converted characters due to #1

EDIT: Here's an example for the JTextArea approach:

import javax.swing.*;

public class JLabelLongTextDemo implements Runnable
{
  public static void main(String args[])
  {
    SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new JLabelLongTextDemo());
  }

  public void run()
  {
    JLabel label = new JLabel("Hello");

    String text = "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa";
//        String text = "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa " + 
//                      "quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.";

    JTextArea textArea = new JTextArea(2, 20);
    textArea.setText(text);
    textArea.setWrapStyleWord(true);
    textArea.setLineWrap(true);
    textArea.setOpaque(false);
    textArea.setEditable(false);
    textArea.setFocusable(false);
    textArea.setBackground(UIManager.getColor("Label.background"));
    textArea.setFont(UIManager.getFont("Label.font"));
    textArea.setBorder(UIManager.getBorder("Label.border"));

    JFrame frame = new JFrame();
    frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    frame.getContentPane().add(label, BorderLayout.NORTH);
    frame.getContentPane().add(textArea, BorderLayout.CENTER);
    frame.setSize(100,200);
    frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
    frame.setVisible(true);
  }
}