Re-using a font object in iTextSharp

I am having trouble trying to define an iTextSharp Font object that I can re-use throughout a class.

My first attempt was to use the FontFactory.GetFont method in 2 private methods that create PdfPCell objects:

FontFactory.GetFont("helvetica", 8)

The problem with this is that only one of the methods prints the font correctly, the other method would not print the inner text of the cell.

Next I tried to create a static field in the class representing the font:

private static Font _standardCellFont;

public static PdfPCell CreateTableHeaderCell(string cellText, int colspan = 1)
    {
        var innerCellText = new Phrase(cellText, PdfSupport._standardCellFont);
        innerCellText.Font.Color = BaseColor.WHITE;

        return new PdfPCell(innerCellText)
                       {
                           Colspan = colspan,
                           PaddingLeft = 5,
                           PaddingRight = 5,
                           FixedHeight = 10,
                           BackgroundColor = BaseColor.BLACK,
                           VerticalAlignment = Element.ALIGN_CENTER
                       };
    }

public static PdfPCell CreateTableCell(string cellText, int colspan = 1, int rowspan = 1, bool bold = false, float minHeight = 0)
    {
        var cellInnerText = 
            bold ? 
            new Phrase(cellText, FontFactory.GetFont("helvetica", 8, Font.BOLD)) :
            new Phrase(cellText, PdfSupport._standardCellFont);

        return 开发者_JAVA百科new PdfPCell(cellInnerText)
                   {
                       Border = Rectangle.NO_BORDER,
                       Colspan = colspan,
                       Rowspan = rowspan,
                       PaddingTop = 1,
                       PaddingBottom = 1,
                       PaddingLeft = 5,
                       PaddingRight = 5,
                       MinimumHeight = minHeight,
                       VerticalAlignment = Element.ALIGN_CENTER
                   };
    }

The result of this is that neither of the methods print the cell text.

I don't think I really understand what is happening when I create a font object, my goal is to be able to define a few common fonts and basic properties (Size, Bold) that I can then re-use throughout my class, however from my usage it appears that a font object cannot be persisted in this way.

---

How strange. They can, and SHOULD, be shared. Are the characters you're trying to draw all in WInAnsiEncoding (mostly the first 256 characters of Unicode).

Ah! I suspect you may be running into an ALIGNMENT issue.

Valid settings for VerticalAlignment:

Element.ALIGN_TOP
Element.ALIGN_MIDDLE
Element.ALIGN_BOTTOM

Element.ALIGN_CENTER is strictly for horizontal alignment. I'm not sure that would make your text vanish, but it's certainly worth looking into.

PS: I believe you can even reuse Font and BaseFont objects across documents, though I haven't tried it myself.