Question

I’ve a list of arbitrary strings. I would like to convert these to a hexadecimal color code.

The code should not be random, as it is essential that the method must return the same color code each time I convert the same string.

SOLUTION:

public string GetColorCode(string value)
{
    var i = value.GetHashCode() & 0x00FFFFFF;
    return i.ToString("X6");
}

Answer 1

You can use GetHashCode() as a starting point. Since GetHasCode() returns a full integer and you usually need just 3 bytes to define a color in RGB, you have to skip the noin significant part by doing either:

var color = str.GetHashCode() & 0x00FFFFFF;

or

 var color = str.GetHashCode()>>8;

this guarantee having same string, same color.