Dynamic Font Sizing in Birt Tutorial

This is a brief guide on how to increase or decrease the font size of an element in Birt depending the length of a string value from a data set / variable.
This can be used where space is limited but the full text is required - eg product desciptions and names on Price Labels.
I will use the CLASSICMODELS sample Dataset from the Birt documentation for my example, and have included a working example file below.

Steps

1. Select the element and open the scripts section.
2. In the OnRender script enter the below code

3. // Initialize to length zero 
   var totalLength = 0;
   // Replace YourColumnName with the name of your data value
   if (row["YourColumnName"]) {
    totalLength += row["YourColumnName"].length;
   }
   switch (true) {
    case (totalLength < 10):
    this.getStyle().fontSize = "40pt";
    break;
    case (totalLength > 10 && totalLength <18):
    this.getStyle().fontSize = "30pt";
    break;
    case (totalLength > 18):
    this.getStyle().fontSize = "18t";
    break;
    default:
    this.getStyle().fontSize = "10pt";
    break;
   }
   
   

4. Save & Preview will give the below output. Note I have applied to the Product name element.

   

   A simple example of the output of the above. A) String of length 16 B) String of Length 23.

An example can be found in the attached file here