Java Color class question

[toString]

Here's the method I'm trying to use:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/awt/Color.html#getColor(java.lang.String)

And I would have suspected at least one of these would have returned something, but they all return null!

System.out.println(Color.getColor("Color.RED"));
System.out.println(Color.getColor("Color.red"));
System.out.println(Color.getColor("red"));
System.out.println(Color.getColor("RED"));

How am I using this incorrectly?! It is a bit late, but I really don't understand it

 

[toString]

Yeah it's imported fine. I get no errors. It's just doing what the method should do if it can't find the color, i.e. return null. But I don't know what sort of string I'm supposed to input to get a proper return value.

I even made a small test class just to check it wasn't anything else causing problems:

import java.awt.Color;

public class Test {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println(Color.getColor("Color.RED"));
    System.out.println(Color.getColor("Color.red"));
    System.out.println(Color.getColor("red"));
    System.out.println(Color.getColor("RED"));
    System.out.println(Color.getColor("java.awt.Color.RED"));
  }
}

There must be something obvious but I can't even see anything on google!

 

[toString]

That's the point, it doesn't return anything!

If it returned a color we'd see the toString of the color and not NULL.

 

[toString]

Thanks for that Visage!
It seems that I got the wrong interpretation of what this method does.

What I need is something like this:

String inputCommand = commandJTextField.getText();

if (Color.getColor(inputCommand) != null) {
	System.out.println("a valid color");
} else {
	System.out.println("an invalid color");
}

Where the user enters say... 'red' and I want to work out if it's a attribute of the Color class.
But I'm not sure that it's possible now. Any help would be great.

The only other way I can think is to have a massive if/else if structure where I define all the colors that the Color class supports.
But that's hardly ideal.

 

[toString]

It's supposed to be just for the colours in the Color class, so things like purple or brown don't matter if they're entered.
I could use an array, but spec-ing out 15ish colours that are repeated elsewhere doesn't really 'feel' right. Even if if it's the simple way!

However, thanks for the reflection idea! I've finally got something that does exactly what I need. Here it is, for those who might be interested in a happy ending:

private Color getInputColor(String colorString) {
	try {
		Field field = Class.forName("java.awt.Color").getField(colorString);
		return (Color) field.get(field);
	} catch (Exception e) {
		return null;
	}
}