Measuring text width to be drawn on Canvas ( Android )

Question

Is there a method which returns the width ( in pixels ) of a text to be drawn on an Android canvas using the drawText() method according to the Paint used to draw it?

Answer 1

There's actually three different ways of measuring text.

GetTextBounds:

val paint = Paint()
paint.typeface = ResourcesCompat.getFont(context, R.font.kaushanscript)
paint.textSize = 500f
paint.color = Color.argb(255, 3, 221, 252)
val contents = "g"
val rect = Rect()
paint.getTextBounds(contents, 0, 1, rect)
val width = rect.width()

MeasureTextWidth:

val paint = Paint()
paint.typeface = ResourcesCompat.getFont(context, R.font.kaushanscript)
paint.textSize = 500f
paint.color = Color.argb(255, 3, 221, 252)
val contents = "g"
val width = paint.measureText(contents, 0, 1)

And getTextWidths:

val paint = Paint()
paint.typeface = ResourcesCompat.getFont(context, R.font.kaushanscript)
paint.textSize = 500f
paint.color = Color.argb(255, 3, 221, 252)
val contents = "g"
val rect = Rect()
val arry = FloatArray(contents.length)
paint.getTextBounds(contents, 0, contents.length, rect)
paint.getTextWidths(contents, 0, contents.length, arry)
val width = ary.sum()

Note that getTextWidths could be useful if you are trying to determine when to wrap text to the next line.

The measureTextWidth and getTextWidth are equal and have the advanced width that measure that others have posted about. Some consider this space excessive. However, this is very subjective and dependent on the font.

For example the width from measure text bounds may actually look too small:

However when adding an additional text the bounds for one letter looks normal:

Images taken from Android Developers Guide to Custom Canvas Drawing