processing hex string to color

Question

I'm reading hex colors from a JSON file, but need to get them as an int so I can create a color.

int col=Integer.parseInt("FF0000",16); 

returns 16711680

int c = unhex("FF0000");

returns 16711680

how do I do this?

Answer 1

If you want to reinvent the wheel, you could parse out the string into RGB hex values "FF", "00", and "00", convert the hex values to integers (255, 0, and 0 respectively) corresponding to int values from 0-255, and then create a Color object with those RGB values.

Personally though, I'd just use:

Color red = Color.decode("#FF0000"); //That's definitely red

Answer 2

You're conflating two things:

Thing one: Hex values like #FF0000 represent integer values.

Thing two: Internally, Processing represents color values as integers.

The integers in the first concept are not the same thing as the integers in the second concept.

In fact, hex color values are a special case in Processing of the Processing editor doing some magic for you. I don't know of a way to go directly from a string value to a hex color value.

Instead, you should parse the String value into its individual components, convert them to integers, and then use the three-argument color() function to create a color.

See this question for more info: Hexadecimal to Integer in Java