How to either determine SVG text box width, or force line breaks after 'x' characters?

Question

Hi,

I'm creating an SVG text box using the Raphael library, and filling it with a dynamic string which is extracted from an XML document.

Sometimes, this string is longer than the canvas I am placing the text box on, so I need to either limit the width of the box which will itself force the line breaks (I can't find any evidence of this being possible) OR ensure that a '\n' line break is inserted after a certain amount of characters.

So (1) is this the best option? And (2) how would I do this?

Answer 1

There isn't an attribute for text wrapping, but there is a simple trick you can use. Add one word at a time to a text object and when it gets too wide, add a line feed. You can use the getBBox() function to determine the width. Basically, you emulate an old fashioned typewriter. Here is a sample of some code that will do this for you. You could easily turn this into a simple function that takes the text and a width.

var r = Raphael(500, 500);
var t = r.text(100, 100).attr('text-anchor', 'start');
var maxWidth = 100;

var content = "Mauris mauris ante, blandit et, ultrices a, suscipit eget, quam. Integer ut neque. Vivamus nisi metus, molestie vel, gravida in, condimentum sit amet, nunc. Nam a nibh. Donec suscipit eros. Nam mi. Proin viverra leo ut odio. Curabitur malesuada. Vestibulum a velit eu ante scelerisque vulputate. ";
var words = content.split(" ");

var tempText = "";
for (var i=0; i<words.length; i++) {
  t.attr("text", tempText + " " + words[i]);
  if (t.getBBox().width > maxWidth) {
    tempText += "\n" + words[i];
  } else {
    tempText += " " + words[i];
  }
}

t.attr("text", tempText.substring(1));