Based on the awesome work done here Samson PHP Color Gradient Generator, I have packed up his code into two functions that are by default set to generate heatmap blue to red color gradients, in as many steps as you need.

https://gist.github.com/bendauphinee/10472641

[php]function heatSteps($config){
$config[‘colorStart’] = (isset($config[‘colorStart’])) ? hexdec($config[‘colorStart’]) : 0xdee7f8;
$config[‘colorEnd’] = (isset($config[‘colorEnd’])) ? hexdec($config[‘colorEnd’]) : 0xff0f15;
$config[‘colorSteps’] = (isset($config[‘colorSteps’])) ? $config[‘colorSteps’] : 10;

$config[‘colorStart’] = (($config[‘colorStart’] >= 0x000000) && ($config[‘colorStart’] <= 0xffffff)) ? $config[‘colorStart’] : 0x000000;
$config[‘colorEnd’] = (($config[‘colorEnd’] >= 0x000000) && ($config[‘colorEnd’] <= 0xffffff)) ? $config[‘colorEnd’] : 0xffffff;
$config[‘colorSteps’] = (($config[‘colorSteps’] > 0) && ($config[‘colorSteps’] < 256)) ? $config[‘colorSteps’] : 256;

$theR0 = ($config[‘colorStart’] & 0xff0000) >> 16;
$theG0 = ($config[‘colorStart’] & 0x00ff00) >> 8;
$theB0 = ($config[‘colorStart’] & 0x0000ff) >> 0;

$theR1 = ($config[‘colorEnd’] & 0xff0000) >> 16;
$theG1 = ($config[‘colorEnd’] & 0x00ff00) >> 8;
$theB1 = ($config[‘colorEnd’] & 0x0000ff) >> 0;

$colorSteps = array();
for($i = 0; $i <= $config[‘colorSteps’]; $i++){
$theR = interpolateHeatSteps($theR0, $theR1, $i, $config[‘colorSteps’]);
$theG = interpolateHeatSteps($theG0, $theG1, $i, $config[‘colorSteps’]);
$theB = interpolateHeatSteps($theB0, $theB1, $i, $config[‘colorSteps’]);

$colorSteps[] = dechex(((($theR << 8) | $theG) << 8) | $theB);
}

return($colorSteps);
}

function interpolateHeatSteps($pBegin, $pEnd, $pStep, $pMax){
if ($pBegin < $pEnd){
return(($pEnd – $pBegin) * ($pStep / $pMax)) + $pBegin;
}else{
return(($pBegin – $pEnd) * (1 – ($pStep / $pMax))) + $pEnd;
}
}[/php]