rich-color-ext extends the great rich library to be able to parse 3-digit hex colors (ie. #09F, the # is required) and CSS color names (ie. rebeccapurple).

Rich's own parser always runs first. The extensions only apply to colors Rich rejects, so everything Rich already understands (including ANSI names like red) behaves exactly as before.

Warning: Breaking changes in v3.0.0

• Item

• Rich's parser now runs first; CSS names and 3-digit hex are only a fallback for colors Rich rejects. Names Rich already knows (red, green, white, orchid, ...) keep Rich's own color instead of the CSS truecolor value.
• 3-digit hex requires the leading # (#09f, not 09f).
• The import-time CSS_MAP constant was removed. Use get_css_map() instead.

See the changelog for details.

Installation

uv (recommended)

# via uv directly
uv add rich-color-ext

or

# or via pip through uv
uv pip install rich-color-ext

pip

pip install rich-color-ext

Usage

To make use of rich-color-ext all you need to do is import and install it at the start of your program:

from rich_color_ext import install
from rich.console import Console
from rich.panel import Panel

install()  # Patch Rich's Color.parse method

console = Console(width=64)
console.print(
    Panel(
        "This is the [b #00ff99]rich_color_ext[/b #00ff99] example for printing CSS named colors ([bold rebeccapurple]rebeccapurple[/bold rebeccapurple]), 3-digit hex colors ([bold #f0f]#f0f[/bold #f0f]), and [b #99ff00]rich.color_triplet.ColorTriplet[/b #99ff00] & [b #00ff00]rich.color.Color[/b #00ff00] instances.",
        padding=(1, 2),
    ),
    justify="center",
)

How it works

1. Color.parse(text) calls Rich's original parser.
2. If Rich raises ColorParseError, #abc is expanded to #aabbcc, or the text is looked up (case-insensitively) in the CSS color map.
3. Anything else re-raises Rich's original ColorParseError.

Results are cached with functools.lru_cache, like Rich's own parser.

Install, uninstall and inspect

from rich_color_ext import get_css_map, install, is_installed, uninstall

install()  # safe to call more than once, and from multiple threads
assert is_installed()

get_css_map()["rebeccapurple"]  # '#663399'

uninstall()  # restores Rich's original Color.parse exactly

• Importing rich_color_ext has no side effects: nothing is patched until you call install(), and the display-only Rich modules (Panel, Table, Columns) are loaded lazily.
• install() / uninstall() are serialised with a lock, and is_installed() inspects Color.parse itself.
• The patch is installed as a classmethod, like Rich's own, so Color.parse(...) works on a Color instance and MyColor.parse(...) on a Color subclass returns a MyColor.

Migrating from v2

rich-color-ext by Max Ludden