Convert System.Drawing.Color to RGB and Hex Value

Using C# I was trying to develop the following two. The way I am doing it may have some problem and need your kind advice. In addition, I dont know whether there is any existing method to do the same.

private static String HexConverter(System.Drawing.Color c)
{
    String rtn = String.Empty;
    try
    {
        rtn = "#" + c.R.ToString("X2") + c.G.ToString("X2") + c.B.ToString("X2");
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        //doing nothing
    }

    return rtn;
}

private static String RGBConverter(System.Drawing.Color c)
{
    String rtn = String.Empty;
    try
    {
        rtn = "RGB(" + c.R.ToString() + "," + c.G.ToString() + "," + c.B.ToString() + ")";
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        //doing nothing
    }

    return rtn;
}

Thanks.


I'm failing to see the problem here. The code looks good to me.

The only thing I can think of is that the try/catch blocks are redundant -- Color is a struct and R, G, and B are bytes, so c can't be null and c.R.ToString(), c.G.ToString(), and c.B.ToString() can't actually fail (the only way I can see them failing is with a NullReferenceException, and none of them can actually be null).

You could clean the whole thing up using the following:

private static String HexConverter(System.Drawing.Color c)
{
    return "#" + c.R.ToString("X2") + c.G.ToString("X2") + c.B.ToString("X2");
}

private static String RGBConverter(System.Drawing.Color c)
{
    return "RGB(" + c.R.ToString() + "," + c.G.ToString() + "," + c.B.ToString() + ")";
}

You could keep it simple and use the native color translator:

Color red = ColorTranslator.FromHtml("#FF0000");
string redHex = ColorTranslator.ToHtml(red);

Then break the three color pairs into integer form:

int value = int.Parse(hexValue, System.Globalization.NumberStyles.HexNumber);

If you can use C#6 or higher, you can benefit from Interpolated Strings and rewrite @Ari Roth's solution like this:

C# 6 :

public static class ColorConverterExtensions
{
    public static string ToHexString(this Color c) => $"#{c.R:X2}{c.G:X2}{c.B:X2}";

    public static string ToRgbString(this Color c) => $"RGB({c.R}, {c.G}, {c.B})";
}

Also:

  • I add the keyword this to use them as extensions methods.
  • We can use the type keyword string instead of the class name.
  • We can use lambda syntax.
  • I rename them to be more explicit for my taste.