I am trying to use hex color values in Swift, instead of the few standard ones that UIColor
allows you to use, but I have no idea how to do it.
Example: how would I use #ffffff
as a color?
#ffffff
are actually 3 color components in hexadecimal notation - red ff
, green ff
and blue ff
. You can write hexadecimal notation in Swift using 0x
prefix, e.g 0xFF
To simplify the conversion, let's create an initializer that takes integer (0 - 255) values:
extension UIColor {
convenience init(red: Int, green: Int, blue: Int) {
assert(red >= 0 && red <= 255, "Invalid red component")
assert(green >= 0 && green <= 255, "Invalid green component")
assert(blue >= 0 && blue <= 255, "Invalid blue component")
self.init(red: CGFloat(red) / 255.0, green: CGFloat(green) / 255.0, blue: CGFloat(blue) / 255.0, alpha: 1.0)
}
convenience init(rgb: Int) {
self.init(
red: (rgb >> 16) & 0xFF,
green: (rgb >> 8) & 0xFF,
blue: rgb & 0xFF
)
}
}
Usage:
let color = UIColor(red: 0xFF, green: 0xFF, blue: 0xFF)
let color2 = UIColor(rgb: 0xFFFFFF)
How to get alpha?
Depending on your use case, you can simply use the native UIColor.withAlphaComponent
method, e.g.
let semitransparentBlack = UIColor(rgb: 0x000000).withAlphaComponent(0.5)
Or you can add an additional (optional) parameter to the above methods:
convenience init(red: Int, green: Int, blue: Int, a: CGFloat = 1.0) {
self.init(
red: CGFloat(red) / 255.0,
green: CGFloat(green) / 255.0,
blue: CGFloat(blue) / 255.0,
alpha: a
)
}
convenience init(rgb: Int, a: CGFloat = 1.0) {
self.init(
red: (rgb >> 16) & 0xFF,
green: (rgb >> 8) & 0xFF,
blue: rgb & 0xFF,
a: a
)
}
(we cannot name the parameter alpha
because of a name collision with the existing initializer).
Called as:
let color = UIColor(red: 0xFF, green: 0xFF, blue: 0xFF, a: 0.5)
let color2 = UIColor(rgb: 0xFFFFFF, a: 0.5)
To get the alpha as an integer 0-255, we can
convenience init(red: Int, green: Int, blue: Int, a: Int = 0xFF) {
self.init(
red: CGFloat(red) / 255.0,
green: CGFloat(green) / 255.0,
blue: CGFloat(blue) / 255.0,
alpha: CGFloat(a) / 255.0
)
}
// let's suppose alpha is the first component (ARGB)
convenience init(argb: Int) {
self.init(
red: (argb >> 16) & 0xFF,
green: (argb >> 8) & 0xFF,
blue: argb & 0xFF,
a: (argb >> 24) & 0xFF
)
}
Called as
let color = UIColor(red: 0xFF, green: 0xFF, blue: 0xFF, a: 0xFF)
let color2 = UIColor(argb: 0xFFFFFFFF)
Or a combination of the previous methods. There is absolutely no need to use strings.