TextIcon

Question

Why this not working??
Using JLabel passing TextIcon as the constructor and its width, height is -1. Anyone know what I'am doing wrong?
import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
* Sometimes you want text to be an icon to be rendered as an Image <br>
* You can then rotate it or even rendered label to have different colors for example
public class TextIcon implements Icon {
   private String text = null;
   private Color color = null; 
   private int width = -1;
   private int height = -1;
   public TextIcon(String text) {
      this.text = text;
      color = Color.black;
   public void setColor(Color color) {
      this.color = color;
   public void paintIcon(Component c, Graphics g, int x, int y) {
      g.setColor(color);
      g.drawString(text, x, y);
      FontMetrics fm = g.getFontMetrics();
      width = fm.stringWidth(text);
      height = fm.getHeight();
      System.out.println("g.drawString(" + text + ", " + x + ", " + y + ");");
      System.out.println("width: " + width);
      System.out.println("height: " + height + "\n");
   public int getIconWidth() {
      System.out.println("getIconWidth() = " + width);
      return width;
   public int getIconHeight() {
      System.out.println("getIconHeight() = " + height);
      return height;

Answer 1

does it work with JLabel alignments of SwingConstants.LEFT and SwingConstants.RIGHT?I think you have a misunderstanding of how the alignment of left/right works. If the preferred size of a label is 100, but the actual size of the label is 200, then the painting of the label is aligned to the LEFT/RIGHT edge of the label as defined by the alignment.
What you want is the setHorizontalTextPosition() which will control whether the text or icon is painted first.
Anyway, here's some code that uses your first approach to paint the icon:
import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.*;
* Sometimes you want text to be an icon to be rendered as an Image <br>
* You can then rotate it or even rendered label to have different colors for example
public class TextIcon implements Icon
    private String text;
    private Color color;
    private int width;
    private int height;
    private int ascent;
    public TextIcon(String text)
        this.text = text;
        color = Color.black;
        JLabel label = new JLabel(text);
        width = label.getPreferredSize().width;
        height = label.getPreferredSize().height;
        FontMetrics fm = label.getFontMetrics(label.getFont());
        ascent = fm.getAscent();
    public void setColor(Color color)
        this.color = color;
    public void paintIcon(Component c, Graphics g, int x, int y)
        g.setColor(color);
        g.drawString(text, x, y + ascent);
    public int getIconWidth()
        return width;
    public int getIconHeight()
        return height;
    public static void main(String[] args)
        TextIcon textIcon = new TextIcon("Text icon");
        JLabel justIcon = new JLabel(textIcon);
        justIcon.setBorder(BorderFactory.createLineBorder(Color.green));
        JLabel labelLeftAndIcon = new JLabel("Label align left: ", textIcon, SwingConstants.CENTER);
        labelLeftAndIcon.setHorizontalTextPosition(JLabel.LEFT);
        labelLeftAndIcon.setBorder(BorderFactory.createLineBorder(Color.red));
        JLabel labelRightAndIcon = new JLabel("Label align right: ", textIcon, SwingConstants.CENTER);
        labelRightAndIcon.setBorder(BorderFactory.createLineBorder(Color.blue));
        JPanel panel = new JPanel();
        panel.setLayout(new FlowLayout(FlowLayout.LEFT, 20, 0));
        // Add just an icon to test by itself
        panel.add(justIcon);
        // Add with label align left and icon
        panel.add(labelLeftAndIcon);
        // Add with label align right and icon
        panel.add(labelRightAndIcon);
        JFrame f = new JFrame();
        f.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        f.getContentPane().add(panel);
        f.setSize(640, 400);
        f.setLocationRelativeTo( null );
        f.setVisible(true);
}Note: you will probably want to add a setFont() method so you can better control the size of the text rather than always using the label default font.