CODEWITHSUNDEEP
wpfserializationcolors
dthrasher
dthrasher

Reputation: 41822

How do I serialize a System.Windows.Media.Color object to an sRGB string?

I need to serialize a color used in a WPF application to a database. I'd like to use the sRGB values, because they're more familiar to those of us that have spent the last few years doing web development.

How can a get an ARGB string (like #FFFFFFFF) from a System.Windows.Media.Color object?

UPDATE: I was misled by the documentation on MSDN. As @Kris noted below, the documentation for the ToString() method is incorrect. Although it says that ToString() "creates a string representation of the color using the ScRGB channels", it will actually return a string in ARGB hex format if the color was created using the FromARGB() method. It's an undocumented feature, I suppose.

See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms606572.aspx

Upvotes: 18

Views: 15622

Answers (7)

Vivek Dhiman
Vivek Dhiman

Reputation: 429

There is inbuild implementation for System.Windows.Media.Color toString() method which gives hexcode of the color.

Snippet from the class interface it self

        //
        // Summary:
        //     Creates a string representation of the color using the sRGB channels.
        //
        // Returns:
        //     The string representation of the color. The default implementation represents
        //     the System.Byte values in hex form, prefixes with the # character, and starts
        //     with the alpha channel. For example, the System.Windows.Media.Color.ToString()
        //     value for System.Windows.Media.Colors.AliceBlue is #FFF0F8FF.
        public override string ToString();

Upvotes: 1

Wayne Lo
Wayne Lo

Reputation: 3719

If your purpose is to serialize to a file and deserialize back to the color object, I think you are better of to convert color to an Int32 and vice versa. It is no brainier to serialize/deserialize Int32. If this is your purpose, here is the code: Color To Int32:

        byte[] color = new byte[4];
        color[0] = Color.B;
        color[1] = Color.G;
        color[2] = Color.R;
        color[3] = Color.A;
        Int32 intColor = System.BitConverter.ToInt32(color, 0);

Int32 To Color:

byte[] bytes = System.BitConverter.GetBytes(intColor);
Color =new System.Windows.Media.Color(){B= bytes[0], G=bytes[1], R=bytes[2], A=bytes[3]};

Upvotes: 2

Muad'Dib
Muad'Dib

Reputation: 29256

This answer is for GDI colors, and not WPF, so might not be much help.

You can get the HTML color string (and back) like this

System.Drawing.Color c = System.Drawing.ColorTranslator.FromHtml("#F5F7F8");
String strHtmlColor = System.Drawing.ColorTranslator.ToHtml(c);

here is the MSDN documentation.

Upvotes: 1

Anthony Bobenrieth
Anthony Bobenrieth

Reputation: 2893

You can also do it this way:

string myHex = new ColorConverter().ConvertToString(myColor);

Upvotes: 10

Phil J Pearson
Phil J Pearson

Reputation: 546

I created a struct to handle conversion and serialisation. It solves two problems for me: it is serialisable and it corrects the spelling ;)

[Serializable]
public struct Colour
    {
    public byte A;
    public byte R;
    public byte G;
    public byte B;

    public Colour(byte a, byte r, byte g, byte b)
        {
        A = a;
        R = r;
        G = g;
        B = b;
        }

    public Colour(Color color)
        : this(color.A, color.R, color.G, color.B)
        {
        }

    public static implicit operator Colour(Color color)
        {
        return new Colour(color);
        }

    public static implicit operator Color(Colour colour)
        {
        return Color.FromArgb(colour.A, colour.R, colour.G, colour.B);
        }
    }

Just use Colour where you would otherwise use System.Windows.Media.Color

Upvotes: 5

Kris
Kris

Reputation: 7170

If you create your colors using either Color.FromRgb or Color.FromArgb instead of FromScRgb you should get a hex string result from ToString.

If you want to do it manually

string.Format("#{0:X2}{1:X2}{2:X2}{3:X2}", c.A, c.R, c.G, c.B);

You can use int.Parse(,NumberStyles.HexNumber) to go the other way.

Note sRGB and scRGB refer to different color spaces, make sure your using the one you want.

Upvotes: 24

AndrewS
AndrewS

Reputation: 3500

You can get the A, R, G and B values from a Color instance as bytes, so you just need to convert the bytes to hex and concatenate the hex values as strings.

byte[] to hex string

Upvotes: 0

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