Hex color util for minecraft 1.16 and above

README.md

A simple util method for coloring strings using normal chat colors (&) and the new HEX colors added on 1.16, the format used it's <#FFFFFF> or <color_name> (second has a limited list of colors added into Bungeecord Chat API for the old color system, for example <red> it's &c).

A small visualization of how the regex works, made using debuggex.com

HexUtil.java

import net.md_5.bungee.api.ChatColor;
import org.apache.commons.lang.StringUtils;

import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

public class HexUtil {
    private static final Pattern PATTERN = Pattern.compile(
            "<(#[a-f0-9]{6}|aqua|black|blue|dark_(aqua|blue|gray|green|purple|red)|gray|gold|green|light_purple|red|white|yellow)>",
            Pattern.CASE_INSENSITIVE
    );

    public static String color(String text) {
        if (text == null || text.isEmpty()) {
            return "";
        }

        final Matcher matcher = PATTERN.matcher(text);

        while (matcher.find()) {
            try {
                final ChatColor chatColor = ChatColor.of(matcher.group(1));

                if (chatColor != null) {
                    text = StringUtils.replace(text, matcher.group(), chatColor.toString());
                }
            } catch (IllegalArgumentException ignored) { }
        }

        return ChatColor.translateAlternateColorCodes('&', text);
    }
}