Print strings on terminal with color

Question

Can anyone tell me how to print my strings on terminal with color in Java? If there is a library for that purpose please introduce it to me, I rather use one than do the job myself:)

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The console output screen is black or white by default.

If you want to Highlight some text on the output screen, you can use the ANSI color codes and highlight the particular text.

System.out.println(ANSI_COLORNAME + "This text is colored" + ANSI_RESET);

Answer 2

Yes there is. I've implemented a library named JTerminal in Java to print custom outputs on terminal, Including print and println with your desired foreground and background colors. It supports 8-bit 256 colors(XTerm code).

It's an easy to use library. To print your string with color you want, You just need to make a static call to print or println method:

import io.github.shuoros.jterminal.JTerminal;
import io.github.shuoros.jterminal.ansi.Color;

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Prints "Hello World!" with orange foreground color
        JTerminal.println("Hello World!", Color.ORANGE);
        // Prints "Hello World!" with orange foreground and white background color
        JTerminal.println("Hello World!", Color.ORANGE, Color.WHITE);
    }
}

You can also colorize your string with different colors in different ranges by one line of code:

import java.util.List;

import io.github.shuoros.jterminal.JTerminal;
import io.github.shuoros.jterminal.ansi.Color;
import io.github.shuoros.jterminal.util.TextEntity;

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Prints ">JTerminal:~ 1.0.2" with the colors of its logo
        JTerminal.println(">JTerminal:~ 1.0.2", List.of(//
                new TextEntity(0, 1, Color.DARK_SEA_GREEN_7), //
                new TextEntity(1, 10, Color.ORANGE), //
                new TextEntity(10, 12, Color.DARK_SEA_GREEN_7), //
                new TextEntity(12, 18, Color.WHITE)));
    }
}

To add JTerminal to your maven or gradle project you can add its dependecy:

Maven

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/io.github.shuoros/JTerminal -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>io.github.shuoros</groupId>
    <artifactId>JTerminal</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.2</version>
</dependency>

Gradle

// https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/io.github.shuoros/JTerminal
implementation group: 'io.github.shuoros', name: 'JTerminal', version: '1.0.2'

Head over to JTerminal github repository for some examples.