Coloring a string before adding it to a JTextArea

Question

Is there a way, to highlight or change the color of a string that gets added from a String[] to a JTextArea? Currently I'm using the DefaultHighlighter with the addHighlighter(from, to, highlighter) method, but that does not work the way ' want it to. The String[] comes from a list that records key imput, and ' want every singlecharacter string to be highlighted to colored.

Example what the JTextArea looks like: A B C D E F G [SPACE] H I J K L [ENTER].

By the way, I add one string at a time to the textArea with a for loop like that:

for(int cnt = 0; cnt <= strings.length; cnt++){

        if(strings[cnt].length() != 1){
            text.append("[" + strings[cnt] + "] ");
        }
        else{
            text.append(strings[cnt]);
                //tryed to do it like that, but obviously did not work the way it wanted it to

// text.getHighlighter().addHighlight(cnt, cnt + 1, highlightPainter); } }

Answer 1

The color for a JTextArea applys to the entire JTextComponent's Document text foreground color rather than to individual characters. You can use JTextPane instead

Here is a simple example:

public class ColoredTextApp {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        javax.swing.SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                JFrame frame = new JFrame("Colored Text");
                frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

                StyledDocument doc = new DefaultStyledDocument();
                JTextPane textPane = new JTextPane(doc);
                textPane.setText("Different Colored Text");

                Random random = new Random();
                for (int i = 0; i < textPane.getDocument().getLength(); i++) {
                    SimpleAttributeSet set = new SimpleAttributeSet();
                    StyleConstants.setForeground(set,
                            new Color(random.nextInt(256), random.nextInt(256),
                                    random.nextInt(256)));
                    StyleConstants.setFontSize(set, random.nextInt(12) + 12);
                    StyleConstants.setBold(set, random.nextBoolean());
                    doc.setCharacterAttributes(i, 1, set, true);
                }

                frame.add(new JScrollPane(textPane));
                frame.pack();
                frame.setVisible(true);
            }
        });
    }
}