thirstycrow

While working in Silverlight I needed a way to convert from hex string representations of colors to a brush (SolidColorBrush in this case).  Below is the extension method I wrote including a way to convert from a named color.

public static class ColorFromHex {

    public static SolidColorBrush ToSolidColorBrush(this string hexString) {
        SolidColorBrush brush = null;
        try {
            if (hexString.Length == 7) {
                //return brush with opacity of 1
                brush = new SolidColorBrush(
                Color.FromArgb(
                    Convert.ToByte("FF", 16),
                    Convert.ToByte(hexString.Substring(1, 2), 16),
                    Convert.ToByte(hexString.Substring(3, 2), 16),
                    Convert.ToByte(hexString.Substring(5, 2), 16))
                );
            }
            else {
                brush = new SolidColorBrush(
                Color.FromArgb(
                    Convert.ToByte(hexString.Substring(1, 2), 16),
                    Convert.ToByte(hexString.Substring(3, 2), 16),
                    Convert.ToByte(hexString.Substring(5, 2), 16),
                    Convert.ToByte(hexString.Substring(7, 2), 16))
                );
            }
        }
        catch (Exception) {
            //try to convert from named color
            try {
                Colors colors = null;
                PropertyInfo prop = typeof(Colors).GetProperty(hexString);
                if (prop != null)
                    brush = new SolidColorBrush((Color)prop.GetValue(colors, null));
            }
            catch (Exception) { }
        }
        return brush;
    }

}

In practice it’s as easy as this:

SolidColorBrush scb = myHexStringFromConfigFileOrWhatever.ToSolidColorBrush();