Tag: Console colour

About a year ago, I started writing a little database program for the console  (just a simple little thing to modify, add, and subtract items from a SQL-Lite database) and I wanted it to be colourful.  However, the codes aren’t that much fun to type in so I came up with a crude implementation of something that could create a header file for me to handle exactly that.

It wasn’t pretty, and a year on with a little extra C++ knowledge under my belt I came up with this to replace it.

This creates a header file and also a nice output listing to print out.

Edit: I’ve since given it a third revision that outputs the codes to a console window rather than to an output file, which kind of made a bit more sense.  I can copy/paste it to a future post if someone wants it.

// Program to output a definition header file for Windows Console colours

#include "stdafx.h"
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

using namespace std;

int main()
{
	/* Output Header file */
	ofstream outFile;
	outFile.open("ConsoleColours.h");
	outFile << "#ifndef ConsoleColoursH" << endl;
	outFile << "#define ConsoleColoursH" << endl;
	outFile << " " << endl;
 
	/* Output Nice Listing */
	ofstream niceList;
	niceList.open("ConsoleColours-Nice.txt");
 
	string listColours[16] = { "DARK_BLUE", "GREEN", "TEAL", "RED",
		"PINK", "KHAKI", "WHITE", "GREY",
		"BRIGHT_BLUE", "BRIGHT_GREEN", "BRIGHT_TEAL", "BRIGHT_RED",
		"BRIGHT_PINK", "BRIGHT_YELLOW", "BRIGHT_WHITE", "BLACK" };
 
	for (int i = 0; i < 256; i++)
	{
		for (int j = 0; j < 16; j++)
		{
			for (int k = 0; k < 16; k++)
			{
				// Output to console window
				if (k % 16 == 0) cout << endl;
 
				SetConsoleTextAttribute(GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), i); cout << " " << i << " ";
 
				//  Output to header file
				outFile << "#define " << listColours[j] << "_WITH_" << listColours[k] << "_BACKGROUND" " SetConsoleTextAttribute(GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), " << i << ");" << endl;
 
				// Create a nice title for each colour in our textfile
				if (k % 16 == 0)
				{
					niceList << endl << listColours[j] << endl;
					niceList << string(listColours[j].length(), '=') << endl;
				}
				// Output to nice listing
				niceList << listColours[j] << "_WITH_" << listColours[k] << "_BACKGROUND" << endl;
				i++;
				if (i == 255) SetConsoleTextAttribute(GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), 8);
			}
		}
	}
	outFile << " " << endl; outFile << "#endif" << endl; outFile.close();
 
	// Reset Console to normal
	cout << endl << endl;
	SetConsoleTextAttribute(GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), 7);
 
	return 0;
}