Fit Text into SVG Element (Using D3/JS)

Question

I want to write text inside a rectangle I create as follows:

body = d3.select(\'body\')

svg = body.append(\'svg\').attr(\'height\', 600).attr(\'width\', 200         


        

Answer 1

Another approach, when trying to fit a straight line of text into an svg element, could use the strategy found in http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/1846692:

node.append("text")
  .text(function(d) { return d.name; })
  .style("font-size", function(d) { return Math.min(2 * d.r, (2 * d.r - 8) / this.getComputedTextLength() * 24) + "px"; })
  .attr("dy", ".35em");

Answer 2

This technique might come in handy. It works with the current svg spec and without foreignObject element http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/7555321

Answer 3

The answer to this question might be relevant. SVG provides no way of wrapping text automatically, but you can embed HTML within SVGs and then use a div for example.

I've updated the jsfiddle here, but it doesn't work that well together with the animation. If you want to make it work properly and behave like any other SVG element, you'll have to pre-compute the line breaks and insert them manually.

Answer 4

To make it work with the animations just enclose in a group element and animate that one instead. http://jsfiddle.net/MJJEc/

body = d3.select('body')
svg = body.append('svg')
                    .attr('height', 600)
                    .attr('width', 200);
    var g = svg.append('g').attr("transform" ,"scale(0)");
    rect = g.append('rect')
                    .attr('width', 150)
                    .attr('height', 100)
                    .attr('x', 40)
                    .attr('y', 100)
                    .style('fill', 'none')
                    .attr('stroke', 'black')
    text = g.append('foreignObject')
                    .attr('x', 50)
                    .attr('y', 130)
                    .attr('width', 150)
                    .attr('height', 100)
                    .append("xhtml:body")
                    .html('<div style="width: 150px;">This is some information about whatever</div>')

    g.transition().duration(500).attr("transform" ,"scale(1)");

Answer 5

I had a similar issue and found a reasonable solution by calculating the width of my box. Secondly, I figured out that on average the character width for my current font is about 8. Next I simply do a substring on the text to be displayed. That seems to work perfectly in most cases.

var rectText = rectangles.append("text")
    .text(function(d) {

        TextBoxLength = timeScale(dateFormat.parse(d.endTime)) - timeScale(dateFormat.parse(d.startTime));
        return d.task.substring(0, Math.floor(TextBoxLength / 8));
    })
    .attr("x", function(d) {
        return (timeScale(dateFormat.parse(d.endTime)) - timeScale(dateFormat.parse(d.startTime))) / 2 + timeScale(dateFormat.parse(d.startTime)) + theSidePad;
    })
    .attr("y", function(d, i) {
        return d.position * theGap + 14 + theTopPad;
    })
    .attr("font-size", 12)
    .attr("text-anchor", "middle")
    .attr("text-height", theBarHeight)
    .attr("fill", "#000000");