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 and #FFFFFF, so I can use it as a colour for a HTML element.

Maybe even a shorthand hex value (e.g: #FFF) if that's less complicated. In fact, a colour from a 'web-safe' palette would be ideal.

Answer 1

Just porting over the Java from Compute hex color code for an arbitrary string to Javascript:

function hashCode(str) { // java String#hashCode
    var hash = 0;
    for (var i = 0; i < str.length; i++) {
       hash = str.charCodeAt(i) + ((hash << 5) - hash);
    }
    return hash;
} 

function intToRGB(i){
    var c = (i & 0x00FFFFFF)
        .toString(16)
        .toUpperCase();

    return "00000".substring(0, 6 - c.length) + c;
}

To convert you would do:

intToRGB(hashCode(your_string))