Groovy wrapping of long table td text with no blanks

Subtitle: Groovy's a Wrap

Just today I had a client -- who had just tested a fairly complex GSP -- ask to have text in a table data element wrap. He had tested it with a long string of characters with no spaces. He wanted:

asldfjas;fjasodfsaodjfsaodfdsadfa;ljlj

To show as:

asldfjas;fj
asodfsaod
jfsaodfdsa
dfa;ljlj

And not just the first 12 characters that fit in the td.


Quick solution: Hey buddy, use spaces and the browser will wrap for you.
Groovy solution: Insert thespaces for them.

I took the Groovy option. What I did was extend the String class in BootStrap to have a wrapAt method:

class BootStrap {

def init = { servletContext ->
String.metaClass.wrapAt = {width ->
matcher = (delegate =~ /\w{1,$width}/);
def that = ''
matcher.each {
 that += "${it.trim()} "
}
return that
}
}
def destroy = {
}
} 

Then, in my GSP (where the em width was 12) I added:

<td>${option.value.wrapAt(12)}</td>

I tested the code with the following:

String.metaClass.wrapAt = {width ->
println delegate
matcher = (delegate =~ /\w{1,$width}/);
def that = ''
matcher.each {
that += "${it.trim()} "
}
return that
}

def str = 'one two thetimehascomeforalgoodmentocometotheaidoftheircountry'
assert "one two thetimehas comeforalg oodmentoco metotheaid oftheircou ntry " == str.wrapAt(10)

Sure, not a perfect solution, but all the text the user keyed is viewable on the page (and the optional PDF that is generated from that page.) It looks like this:

one two
thetimehasco
meforalgoodm
entocometoth
eaidoftheirc
ountry

Also, it gave me a use for Groovy meta programming