HTML5 canvas ctx.fillText won't do line breaks?

Question

I can\'t seem to be able to add text to a canvas if the text includes \"\\n\". I mean, the line breaks do not show/work.

ctxPaint.fillText(\"s  ome \\n \\\\n         


        

Answer 1

Here's my solution, modifying the popular wrapText() function that is already presented here. I'm using the prototyping feature of JavaScript so that you can call the function from the canvas context.

CanvasRenderingContext2D.prototype.wrapText = function (text, x, y, maxWidth, lineHeight) {

    var lines = text.split("\n");

    for (var i = 0; i < lines.length; i++) {

        var words = lines[i].split(' ');
        var line = '';

        for (var n = 0; n < words.length; n++) {
            var testLine = line + words[n] + ' ';
            var metrics = this.measureText(testLine);
            var testWidth = metrics.width;
            if (testWidth > maxWidth && n > 0) {
                this.fillText(line, x, y);
                line = words[n] + ' ';
                y += lineHeight;
            }
            else {
                line = testLine;
            }
        }

        this.fillText(line, x, y);
        y += lineHeight;
    }
}

Basic usage:

var myCanvas = document.getElementById("myCanvas");
var ctx = myCanvas.getContext("2d");
ctx.fillStyle = "black";
ctx.font = "12px sans-serif";
ctx.textBaseline = "top";
ctx.wrapText("Hello\nWorld!",20,20,160,16);

Here's a demonstration I put together: http://jsfiddle.net/7RdbL/