Hello world 👋🏻 I'm back on track. The #100daysofMiva coding challenge day 9 and I worked on a simple colour palette Generator in Nodejs. Let's have a walk through...✨

🎨 Color Palette Generator

Check it out
https://colorpal.onrender.com

This is a Color Palette Generator built with Node.js using Express.js and chroma-js. It generates a beautiful 5-color palette every time, with varying shades of a randomly generated base color. Perfect for UI/UX designers looking for quick color inspiration! 🌈

🚀 Features

Generates 5 matching colors as variants of a single base color 🎨.
Each palette is assigned a unique ID, allowing users to retrieve it via the /palette/:id route.
Built with Express.js for server-side logic and chroma-js for color manipulation.
Simple and elegant UI for displaying the generated palette, with a refresh button to generate new palettes dynamically.

Backend 😎

🛠️ Technologies Used

Node.js & Express.js: Backend framework to handle routing.
Chroma.js: For powerful color manipulation and palette generation.
HTML/CSS/Bootstrap: For a clean, responsive UI.

🌟 Getting Started

1. Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/Marvellye/colorpal
cd colorpal

2. Install Dependencies

npm install

3. Run the Application

node app.js

4. Open the Application

Visit the app in your browser at:

http://localhost:3000

You will see an interface where you can generate a new 5-color palette. Press the Generate button to fetch a new color palette.

5. Retrieve a Palette by ID

To retrieve a specific palette, go to:

http://localhost:3000/palette/:id

Replace :id with the ID of the palette you want to view, for example:

http://localhost:3000/palette/C08552-F3E9DC-5E3023-DAB49D

🔧 How it Works

Generating a Palette: Each time you click the Generate button, a base color is randomly generated. From this base, 5 distinct color variants (different shades) are created.
Unique ID: Each generated palette has a unique ID made from the hexadecimal values of the colors, which can be used to retrieve the palette later.
Using Chroma.js: The power of chroma-js ensures that the generated colors are visually appealing, offering a variety of brightness levels.

🖼️ Example Palette

Here’s an example of the kind of palette the app generates:

Base Color: #C08552
Palette: 
#F3E9DC (Light)
#5E3023 (Dark)
#DAB49D (Neutral)

Front-end🎉✨

🎨 Colour Palette display

This Colour Palette Generator dynamically generates a palette of five colors and displays them in the UI. Users can interact with the palette by clicking the Generate button, and the palette ID is used to save and share specific color combinations. Here's how the layout works.

📄 HTML Layout

Header

<!-- Header -->
<header class="p-3 text-center">
   <h1>Colour Palette Generator</h1>
</header>

The header provides a clean and simple title for the application.

Colour Boxes

<!-- Colour Boxes -->
<section class="color-container">
   <div id="box1" class="color-box" style="background-color: #000000;">
      <span>#000000</span>
   </div>
   <div id="box2" class="color-box" style="background-color: #000000;">
      <span>#000000</span>
   </div>
   <div id="box3" class="color-box" style="background-color: #000000;">
      <span>#000000</span>
   </div>
   <div id="box4" class="color-box" style="background-color: #000000;">
      <span class="text-white">Hey!</span>
   </div>
   <div id="box5" class="color-box" style="background-color: #000000;">
      <span class="text-white"></span>
   </div>
</section>

This section contains the color boxes. Each box is a div that dynamically changes its background color based on the generated color palette. The span inside each div displays the color's hex value.

Loader

<!-- Loader -->
<section id="loader" class="loader">
   <div class="is-loading">
      <h3 id="load-text">Generating...</h3>
   </div>
</section>

This section contains a loader that appears when a new color palette is being generated. The loader disappears after the colors are loaded.

Footer

<!-- Footer -->
<footer class="d-flex justify-content-between align-items-center">
   <button onclick="gen()" class="btn btn-light">Generate</button>
   <button class="btn text-white" onclick="share(window.location.href)">
      <i class="fa-regular fa-share-from-square"></i>
   </button>
   <span class="">100daysofMiva-Marvelly</span>
</footer>

The footer contains a Generate button that triggers the color generation and a share button for social media sharing.

🚀 JavaScript Functionality

Dynamic Color Generation

const boxes = [
    document.getElementById('box1'),
    document.getElementById('box2'),
    document.getElementById('box3'),
    document.getElementById('box4'),
    document.getElementById('box5')
];

function updateBoxes(colors) {
    colors.forEach((color, index) => {
        boxes[index].style.backgroundColor = color;
        boxes[index].querySelector('span').textContent = color;
    });
}

This JavaScript code dynamically updates the colors in the color boxes when a new palette is generated. The colors are applied to each div element in the UI.

Palette Generation Logic

async function gen() {
    // Show the loader
    loader.style.display = 'block';

    try {
        const response = await fetch('/palette');
        const data = await response.json();

        // Update the boxes with the new colors
        updateBoxes(data.palette);

        // Update the URL with the new ID
        history.pushState({}, '', `/${data.id}`);

        loader.style.display = 'none';
    } catch (error) {
        console.error('Error fetching palette:', error);
        loader.style.display = 'none';
    }
}

The gen() function fetches a new color palette from the /palette API route, updates the color boxes, and modifies the browser URL with the new palette ID.

Share Functionality

function share(url) {
    Swal.fire({
        heightAuto: false,
        title: 'Share this Color Palette!',
        html: `
            <div style="display: flex; justify-content: space-around; font-size: 24px;">
                <a href="https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=${encodeURIComponent(url)}" target="_blank" title="Share on WhatsApp">
                    <i class="fab fa-whatsapp" style="color: #25D366;"></i>
                </a>
                <a href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=${encodeURIComponent(url)}" target="_blank" title="Share on Facebook">
                    <i class="fab fa-facebook" style="color: #3b5998;"></i>
                </a>
                <a href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=${encodeURIComponent(url)}" target="_blank" title="Share on Twitter">
                    <i class="fab fa-twitter" style="color: #1DA1F2;"></i>
                </a>
                <a href="https://www.instagram.com/?url=${encodeURIComponent(url)}" target="_blank" title="Share on Instagram">
                    <i class="fab fa-instagram" style="color: #E1306C;"></i>
                </a>
            </div>
        `,
        showConfirmButton: false,
        showCloseButton: false,
    });
}

The share() function allows users to share the current color palette via social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Telegram using SweetAlert popups.

URL-Based Color Loading

// Check if an id is present in the URL
const currentPath = window.location.pathname;
const paletteId = currentPath.substring(1);

if (paletteId) {
    loadPaletteById(paletteId);
} else {
    gen();
}

This functionality checks if there is a color palette ID in the URL when the page is loaded. If an ID is present, the corresponding palette is loaded. Otherwise, a new palette is generated.

🐛 Issues Encountered

Building this app wasn't without its challenges! Here are some of the problems I encountered and how I solved them:

Dull Color Palettes: Initially, I was getting dull and boring colors. The issue was due to the way I was generating shades from the base color. I switched to using hsl.l (lightness) adjustments for better visual results.
Color Palette Variants: At first, I used random colors that were too different from each other. After realizing that everyone needed variants of the same base color for consistency, I adjusted my approach to generate color scales with different lightness levels.
Invalid Palette IDs: When trying to retrieve a palette by ID, some IDs were invalid or incorrectly formatted. I fixed this by ensuring a strict format for the IDs and adding error handling for invalid IDs.
Hex Values Misplacement: At one point, the hex values were not displaying properly inside the color boxes. This was fixed by ensuring the span elements were correctly updated with the hex values.
Palette Sharing: Creating a robust sharing mechanism for various social media platforms was a bit challenging but ultimately solved using SweetAlert for the UI and share links for each platform.
Dynamic Palette Update: Implementing a smooth update of the UI when a new palette was generated was tricky. By using simple JavaScript and handling the loader display correctly, I ensured a seamless experience for users when generating new palettes.

✨ Future Improvements

Add support for saving favorite palettes in a database.
Enhance the UI with animations for palette generation.
Allow users to download the color palette in various formats like JSON, CSS, or an image.