Setting Text Color Dynamically

You can set a font color for text contents dynamically using textColor tags. Syntax of a textColor tag is defined as follows.

<<textColor [color_expression]>>
content_to_be_colored
<</textColor>>

Note – A textColor tag can be used anywhere in a template document except charts.

An expression declared within an opening textColor tag defines a text font color to be applied during runtime. The expression must return a value of one of the following types:

• A string containing the name of a known color, that is, the case-insensitive name of a member of the KnownColor enumeration like in the following example.

    <<textColor [“red”]>>text with red font<</textColor>>
    
  

• A string containing an HTML color code like in the following example.

    <<textColor [“#F08080”]>>text with light coral font<</textColor>>
    
  

• An integer value defining RGB (red, green, blue) components of the color like in the following example.

    <<textColor [0xFFFF00]>>text with yellow font<</textColor>>
    
  

• A value of the Color type.

While building a report, an expression declared within an opening textColor tag is evaluated and text content between the tag and its corresponding closing tag is colored accordingly. The opening and closing textColor tags are removed then.

Note – Within a text block to be colored using a textColor tag, elements having a text font color already applied are not affected during runtime.

You can use textColor tags nested into each other. Also, you can normally use textColor tags within data bands and conditional blocks like in the following example.

Assume that you have the ColoredItem class defined in your application as follows.

public class ColoredItem
{
	public String getName() { ... }
	public String getDescription() { ... }
	public Color getColor() { ... }
	...
}

Given that items is an enumeration of ColoredItem instances, you can use the following template to output every item into a separate paragraph, which text is colored dynamically.

<<foreach [item in items]>><<textColor [item.getColor()]>><<[item.getName()]>><</textColor>>
<</foreach>>

To output every item into a separate table row, which text is colored dynamically, you can use the following template.

<<foreach [item in items]>><<textColor [item.getColor()]>><<[item.getName()]>>

<<[item.getDescription()]>><</textColor>><</foreach>>

Note – Start and end textColor tags can be located either in paragraphs of a single story (or table cell) or in rows of a single document table in the same way as foreach tags.

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FAQ

1. Q: How can I specify a color using a hexadecimal HTML code in a textColor tag?
   A: Place the hex code as a string inside the tag’s expression, e.g., <<textColor ["#1E90FF"]>>. The engine parses the string and applies the corresponding RGB color at runtime.

2. Q: Is it possible to pass a java.awt.Color object returned from a method to the textColor tag?
   A: Yes. The expression can return a Color instance, such as <<textColor [item.getColor()]>>. The tag will use the exact RGB values of the returned Color object.

3. Q: What happens if the text already has a color applied before the textColor tag is evaluated?
   A: The existing color is preserved; the textColor tag only affects text that does not already have a color defined. This prevents overriding manually set colors.

4. Q: Can I nest textColor tags or use them inside a foreach loop?
   A: Both are supported. Nested tags allow hierarchical coloring, and using textColor inside foreach lets you apply a different color for each iteration based on the data source.

5. Q: I receive a “Tag end is unexpected” error when using textColor. What could be wrong?
   A: The error usually indicates a mismatched opening/closing tag or an invalid expression. Ensure the opening tag is <<textColor [expression]>> and the closing tag is exactly <</textColor>>, with no extra characters or missing brackets.