stretch a textField to a max height in jasper reports

Question

I think this is more of a general issue. I would like to use a textfield that gets dynamic data and doesn't stretch more than a given max height. For instance, I have a textfield that, if it gets text that fits in one line, the textfield will be one line height, and i have other elements under it, that will move up with float positioning. Or, if I want a 3 line max height and if the text exceeds that space, then the rest will be trimmed. I don't want to use java expressions to trim that text, as it is not always accurate. I am new to jasper and I am trying to know if there is any way to do this. I did a lot of searches, but maybe there is something that i missed, and i hope someone can help me. Thank you

Answer 1

I managed to solve this by extending net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.TextMeasurer and overriding initialize() method; also I had to extend net.sf.jasperreports.engine.util.AbstractTextMeasurerFactory and override the createMeasurer() method. Now, whenever I want to have max # of lines, with no overflow, I add a property to that text field (e.g. maxLines) which is being passed to my custom TextMeasurerFactory. I hope this helped you.

Answer 2

We had a similar problem at work with JASPER Reports 4.5, where we had an invoice with a header and a table. We wanted the header to have dynamic height based on the lengths of certain fields (like address, partner name, etc,), but not more than a critical limit, otherwise the header will push the table and thus making a mess by splitting it across multiple pages. Also, the invoice shouldn't exceed 1 page. We eventually had to move the header in the background section, where we also put a background for the table consisting of vertical lines (so it will extend to the end of an A4 page) and a white opaque square. This way, if the header exceeds the max height it will go underneath the table's background, cropping the text. This was the desired effect we were looking for. Sounds crazy, but it worked ...