Give your users some colour

This is a real quick one!

If you have a project that involves users interacting with each other, like a chat app or something with profiles, it might be nice to assign them a colour. A bit like WhatsApp names. The challenge is how to make sure the same users always have the same colour as themselves, but within a wide range such that it's effectively random?

You can use ASCII key codes and the modulo operator and combine with HSL for a quick solution that will always return a random, but identical, hue, thereby converting any string into colour.

const name = 'Michael Jordan';
const characters = name.split('');
const code = characters.map(a => a.charCodeAt(0)).join('');
// code is 771059910497101108327411111410097110
const hue = code % 255;
const nameHSL = `hsl(${hue}, 80%, 40%)`;

Of course, you might prefer to use a UID or 'user created at' timestamp in case you have two Michael Jordans - this works for literally any string!

For anyone wondering, MJ is this leafy green.

Lovely.