Thread: How to take User Inputted String for color, and use it in the drawShape(x,y,x,y, Color. )

Hi There,

JDK 1.7 via NetBeans IDE 7.3.1

I have a program that asks for user input using .keyReadString();

The user can type in a color to be used to color a shape.

I know that color words can only be blue or BLUE.

How do you convert the string the user enters into a form that the drawShape( format ) can use?

I've tried:
String eColor = sg.keyReadString();
sg.drawFilledEllipse(startX, startY, (int)radius1, (int)radius2, Color.eColor, 1.0, "");

sg.drawFilledEllipse(startX, startY, (int)radius1, (int)radius2, Color.getColor(eColor), 1.0, "");

String eColor = sg.keyReadString();
double eColorC = Double.parseDouble(eColor);
sg.drawFilledEllipse(startX, startY, (int)radius1, (int)radius2, Color.eColorC, 1.0, "");

etc., always getting an error when running the program, no errors on the code itself.
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: "RED"
at sun.misc.FloatingDecimal.readJavaFormatString(Floa tingDecimal.java:1241)
at java.lang.Double.parseDouble(Double.java:540)
at shapedrawertest.ShapeDrawerTest.main(ShapeDrawerTe st.java:30)

Any ideas would be appreciated!!

Regards,

I think you would need to use some if statements. When you refer to something like Color.BLUE, you're referring to an integer value in the Color object. You can't really glue the word BLUE on to a string "Color." to create a Color.BLUE statement, as far as I know. You could do a series of String.compareToIgnoreCase() if statements, and assign values to a Color variable accordingly. So like...

Color drawingColor;
if eColor is "BLUE"
--> set drawingColor equal to Color.BLUE;

and so on for however many colors you have.

I could be wrong, but I don't think you can use Java to build variable names dynamically, which is what you seem to be trying to do. You gotta hard code them.

Hi and Thank you.

import simplegui.SimpleGUI;
import java.awt.Color;

The SimpleGUI is from a prepackage of demos for doing different things; from here: https://sites.google.com/a/temple.edu/simplegui/
On the left is a Downloads section, containing the prepack of files.

--- Update ---

Though I didn't think it wise to post all the code, the request from user for inputs are in an If-else statement.

I can type the color word into the .drawShape format and it works, but I can get the user input assigned to some kind of variable and use that variable in the .drawShape( ... Color._____ ) format.

Hmm, so it sounds like the following:

sg.print("What color would you like your Ellipse to be?"); //Prompt user for a color.
String eColor = sg.keyReadString(); //reads the color word user enters as a string to variable eColor

Say the user entered red
the String variable eColor is now set to red.

How do you convert the Sting variable eColor to a a Color variable for use in the drawShape ( Color.____)

Just not possible? If not, how do you get the user to give you input that can be used as a their chosen color to draw a shape. Sounds very straight forward to me 8-)