Create a hexadecimal colour based on a string with JavaScript

Question

I want to create a function that will accept any old string (will usually be a single word) and from that somehow generate a hexadecimal value between #000000

Answer 1

Here's a solution I came up with to generate aesthetically pleasing pastel colours based on an input string. It uses the first two chars of the string as a random seed, then generates R/G/B based on that seed.

It could be easily extended so that the seed is the XOR of all chars in the string, rather than just the first two.

Inspired by David Crow's answer here: Algorithm to randomly generate an aesthetically-pleasing color palette

//magic to convert strings to a nice pastel colour based on first two chars
//
// every string with the same first two chars will generate the same pastel colour
function pastel_colour(input_str) {

    //TODO: adjust base colour values below based on theme
    var baseRed = 128;
    var baseGreen = 128;
    var baseBlue = 128;

    //lazy seeded random hack to get values from 0 - 256
    //for seed just take bitwise XOR of first two chars
    var seed = input_str.charCodeAt(0) ^ input_str.charCodeAt(1);
    var rand_1 = Math.abs((Math.sin(seed++) * 10000)) % 256;
    var rand_2 = Math.abs((Math.sin(seed++) * 10000)) % 256;
    var rand_3 = Math.abs((Math.sin(seed++) * 10000)) % 256;

    //build colour
    var red = Math.round((rand_1 + baseRed) / 2);
    var green = Math.round((rand_2 + baseGreen) / 2);
    var blue = Math.round((rand_3 + baseBlue) / 2);

    return { red: red, green: green, blue: blue };
}

GIST is here: https://gist.github.com/ro-sharp/49fd46a071a267d9e5dd