Setting JXL custom Font

Question

How to add custom fonts in JXL? Apart from the one's available by default?

public static final FontName ARIAL = new FontName("Arial");
public static final FontName TIMES = new FontName("Times New Roman");
public static final FontName COURIER = new FontName("Courier New");
public static final FontName TAHOMA = new FontName("Tahoma");

The FontName class appears to be a private static internal class inside of the WritableFont class. How can I add fonts apart from the one mentioned there?

Regards, A Y.

Answer 1

 WritableFont(WritableFont.FontName fn, int ps)
      Constructs of font of the specified face and of size given by the specified point size

see here

Answer 2

Since the FontName constructor is private, we cannot instantiate a new FontName directly. Instead we must use WritableFont.createFont. This is a factory method to create a font specified by the provided font name.

Please be aware of the following:

This method should be used with care, since the string used to create the font name must be recognized by Excel's internal processing

---

To create a Trebuchet MS font, you would simply call the static factory method.

public static final FontName TREBUCHET_MS = WritableFont.createFont("Trebuchet MS");

---

I have create a simple font factory API for creating WritableFont objects below:

FontCreator.java

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

import org.json.excel.parse.PathResolver;

import jxl.Workbook;
import jxl.format.Colour;
import jxl.format.RGB;
import jxl.format.UnderlineStyle;
import jxl.write.Label;
import jxl.write.WritableCell;
import jxl.write.WritableCellFormat;
import jxl.write.WritableFont;
import jxl.write.WritableFont.FontName;
import jxl.write.WritableSheet;
import jxl.write.WritableWorkbook;
import jxl.write.WriteException;
import jxl.write.biff.RowsExceededException;

public class FontCreator {
    // ========================================================================
    // Private Utilities
    // ========================================================================
    private static final Map<Integer, Colour> colorValueMap;
    private static final Map<String, Colour> colorNameMap;

    static {
        colorValueMap = new HashMap<Integer, Colour>();
        colorNameMap = new HashMap<String, Colour>();

        for (Colour color : Colour.getAllColours()) {
            RGB rgb = color.getDefaultRGB();
            int valueKey = (rgb.getRed() << 16) + (rgb.getGreen() << 8) + rgb.getBlue();
            String nameKey = color.getDescription();

            colorValueMap.put(valueKey, color);
            colorNameMap.put(nameKey, color);
        }
    }

    // ========================================================================
    // Global Values
    // ========================================================================
    public static final WritableFont TREBUCHET_MS = create("Trebuchet MS");
    public static final WritableFont CONSOLAS = create("Consolas", 9, "ocean blue", true, false, 0);

    public static final int NO_UNDERLINE = 0x0;
    public static final int SINGLE = 0x1;
    public static final int DOUBLE = 0x2;
    public static final int SINGLE_ACCOUNTING = 0x21;
    public static final int DOUBLE_ACCOUNTING = 0x22;

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            File exlFile = new File(PathResolver.resolve("${userprofile}/documents/excel-font-test.xls"));
            WritableWorkbook writableWorkbook = Workbook.createWorkbook(exlFile);
            WritableSheet writableSheet = writableWorkbook.createSheet("Sheet1", 0);
            WritableCellFormat cellFormat = new WritableCellFormat(FontCreator.CONSOLAS);

            WritableCell label = new Label(0, 0, "This is a test.", cellFormat);

            writableSheet.addCell(label);

            writableWorkbook.write();
            writableWorkbook.close();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (RowsExceededException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (WriteException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public static WritableFont create(String name, int size, Colour color, boolean bold, boolean italic,
            int underline) {
        UnderlineStyle underlineStyle = UnderlineStyle.getStyle(underline);
        FontName font = WritableFont.createFont(name);

        if (bold) {
            return new WritableFont(font, size, WritableFont.BOLD, italic, underlineStyle, color);
        } else {
            return new WritableFont(font, size, WritableFont.NO_BOLD, italic, underlineStyle, color);
        }
    }

    public static WritableFont create(String name, int size, int color, boolean bold, boolean italic, int underline) {
        return create(name, size, lookupColor(color), bold, italic, underline);
    }

    public static WritableFont create(String name, int size, String color, boolean bold, boolean italic,
            int underline) {
        return create(name, size, lookupColor(color.toLowerCase()), bold, italic, underline);
    }

    public static WritableFont create(String fontName, int size, int color) {
        return create(fontName, size, color, false, false, NO_UNDERLINE);
    }

    public static WritableFont create(String fontName, int size, String color) {
        return create(fontName, size, color, false, false, NO_UNDERLINE);
    }

    public static WritableFont create(String fontName, int size) {
        return create(fontName, size, 0x000000);
    }

    public static WritableFont create(String fontName) {
        return create(fontName, WritableFont.DEFAULT_POINT_SIZE);
    }

    public static Colour lookupColor(int value) {
        return colorValueMap.containsKey(value) ? colorValueMap.get(value) : Colour.AUTOMATIC;
    }

    public static Colour lookupColor(String value) {
        return colorNameMap.containsKey(value) ? colorNameMap.get(value) : Colour.AUTOMATIC;
    }
}

PathResolver.java

You can ignore this file, it is only used to resolve the path ("${userprofile}/documents/excel-font-test.xls") in the example above.

import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

public class PathResolver {
    private static final Pattern envVarRegex;

    static {
        String envVar = "[\\w\\(\\)]+";
        String expression = "\\$\\{(" + envVar + "+)\\}|\\$(" + envVar + ")";

        envVarRegex = Pattern.compile(expression);
    }

    public static String resolve(String path) {
        if (path == null) {
            return null;
        }

        Matcher m = envVarRegex.matcher(path);
        StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();

        while (m.find()) {
            String envVar = m.group(0);
            String envVarName = null == m.group(1) ? m.group(2) : m.group(1);

            m.appendReplacement(sb, resolveEnvVar(envVar, envVarName));
        }

        return m.appendTail(sb).toString();
    }

    private static String resolveEnvVar(String envVar, String name) {
        try {
            return Matcher.quoteReplacement(System.getenv(name));
        } catch (NullPointerException e) {
            System.err.println("Warning: Environment variable does no exist: " + name);
        }
        return Matcher.quoteReplacement(envVar);
    }
}