Now you can use either of those options. And it is going to work in any case. Your color can be a HEX code, like this:
myView.setBackgroundResource(ContextCompat.getColor(context, Color.parseColor("#FFFFFF")));
A color resource, like this:
myView.setBackgroundResource(ContextCompat.getColor(context,R.color.blue_background));
Or a custom xml resource, like so:
myView.setBackgroundResource(R.drawable.my_custom_background);
Hope it helps!