String to hexadecimal Color Code

Question

in a project I'm making I'm using numerous color codes. the point is not for them to be Beautiful, just differents.(I also want to be able to constantly have the same colors code for the same fields on refresh (no Random color generators)) I was thinking about taking the name of the fields and turn them to Hex color. Is there a pre-defined function for this?

Exemple :

$string = "Blablabla";
$colorCode = toColorCode($string);

function toColorCode($initial){
    /*MAGIC MADNESS*/
    return array("R"=>XXX,"G"=>XXX,"B"=>XXX);
}

FORGOT TO MENTION : it's important that the values are Numbers only.

On a side note is this a good idea from a UI design point of view? How will you make sure your text has a decent contrast with the background? I doubt anyone will appreciate yellow text on white background — Manos Dilaverakis
– Manos Dilaverakis, Commented Dec 19, 2011 at 16:22
Two questions: 1. What exactly are you expecting as an argument to toColorCode()? A word, 'white', or a hex code, 'FFFFFF'? 2. Is there a reason that you need to return an array of values instead of the actual hex code? — David Myers
– David Myers, Commented Dec 19, 2011 at 16:22
@ManosDilaverakis if he puts this just a legend color it won't be that bad. — KARASZI István
– KARASZI István, Commented Dec 19, 2011 at 16:33
@ManosDilaverakis that's where the importance of an array come. i can select Red Blue for 1 categorie and set Green to a fix value. i could also force a minimum value on one of the field etc... — Charles Forest
– Charles Forest, Commented Dec 19, 2011 at 17:01

KARASZI István · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-19 17:08:50Z

3

As far as I can understand, you want to generate a fairly unique color code for a string.

The easies way is to call a checksum function on the string, for example MD5:

function toColorCode($initial){
  $checksum = md5($initial);
  return array(
    "R" => hexdec(substr($checksum, 0, 2)),
    "G" => hexdec(substr($checksum, 2, 2)),
    "B" => hexdec(substr($checksum, 4, 2))
  );
}

edited Dec 19, 2011 at 17:08

answered Dec 19, 2011 at 16:23

KARASZI István

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3 Comments

Charles Forest Over a year ago

would be good if MD5 returns only numerical characters, sry i forgot to mention.

Justin ᚅᚔᚈᚄᚒᚔ Over a year ago

Wrap the substr: hexdec(substr($checksum, 0, 2))

Charles Forest Over a year ago

Thanks justin, didn't tought about it. that fixed my problem!

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