UIColor Creation w/ Hex Values

As a web developer by day, my world revolves around the 6 character hexadecimal color codes that we use on web pages. For example, #FF0000 is the reddest of the reds.

Unfortunately, UIColor doesn't support a hexadecimal constructor, only CGFloat red/green/blue values. So extensions to the rescue!

Below you can find an extension to UIColor that takes a hexadecimal value as its color and creates an appropriate UIColor object: let color = UIColor(hex: "1289AB")

Note that it requires the Swift extension from my previous article about Swift substrings.

    //    //  UIColor+CKHexColors.swift    //    import Foundation    import UIKit    extension UIColor {        // constructor takes a hex color as a string in the format: "1289AB"        convenience init(hexColor: String) {            let redColor = UIColor.hexColorToFloat(hexColor[0...1])            let greenColor = UIColor.hexColorToFloat(hexColor[2...3])            let blueColor = UIColor.hexColorToFloat(hexColor[4...5])            self.init(red: redColor, green: greenColor, blue: blueColor, alpha: 1.0)        }        // converts a hex color string to a float number        private class func hexColorToFloat(hexColor: String) -> CGFloat {            let char0 = hexColor[0...0].uppercaseString            let char1 = hexColor[1...1].uppercaseString            let value0 = UIColor.hexToInt(char0)            let value1 = UIColor.hexToInt(char1)            let colorValue = (value0 * 16) + value1            let floatValue: CGFloat = CGFloat(colorValue) / 255.0            return floatValue        }        // converts a hex character to an integer        private class func hexToInt(hex: String) -> Int {            var intValue = 0            switch hex {                case "A":                    intValue = 10                case "B":                    intValue = 11                case "C":                    intValue = 12                case "D":                    intValue = 13                case "E":                    intValue = 14                case "F":                    intValue = 15                default:                    intValue = Int(hex) ?? 0            }            return intValue        }    }