Matplotlib: how to adjust space between legend markers and labels? - python

I want to adjust space between legend markers and labels. Sometime the space is too much as default. Does anyone know how to do this?
Thanks.

legend() has a kwarg in called handletextpad which will do what you are looking for. By default, this is set to 0.8. From the docs:
handletextpad : float or None
The pad between the legend handle and text. Measured in font-size
units.
Default is None which will take the value from the
legend.handletextpad rcParam.
So when you call legend, add that kwarg, and experiment with the value. Something like:
ax.legend(handletextpad=0.1)
Consider the following:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(ncols=2)
ax1.plot(range(5), 'ro', label='handletextpad=0.8')
ax2.plot(range(5), 'bo', label='handletextpad=0.1')
ax1.legend()
ax2.legend(handletextpad=0.1)
plt.show()

Related

Python matplotlib: Rotate x-axis labels of a Bar-Chart [duplicate]

I can't figure out how to rotate the text on the X Axis. Its a time stamp, so as the number of samples increase, they get closer and closer until they overlap. I'd like to rotate the text 90 degrees so as the samples get closer together, they aren't overlapping.
Below is what I have, it works fine with the exception that I can't figure out how to rotate the X axis text.
import sys
import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('Agg')
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import datetime
font = {'family' : 'normal',
'weight' : 'bold',
'size' : 8}
matplotlib.rc('font', **font)
values = open('stats.csv', 'r').readlines()
time = [datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(float(i.split(',')[0].strip())) for i in values[1:]]
delay = [float(i.split(',')[1].strip()) for i in values[1:]]
plt.plot(time, delay)
plt.grid(b='on')
plt.savefig('test.png')
This works for me:
plt.xticks(rotation=90)
Many "correct" answers here but I'll add one more since I think some details are left out of several. The OP asked for 90 degree rotation but I'll change to 45 degrees because when you use an angle that isn't zero or 90, you should change the horizontal alignment as well; otherwise your labels will be off-center and a bit misleading (and I'm guessing many people who come here want to rotate axes to something other than 90).
Easiest / Least Code
Option 1
plt.xticks(rotation=45, ha='right')
As mentioned previously, that may not be desirable if you'd rather take the Object Oriented approach.
Option 2
Another fast way (it's intended for date objects but seems to work on any label; doubt this is recommended though):
fig.autofmt_xdate(rotation=45)
fig you would usually get from:
fig = plt.gcf()
fig = plt.figure()
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
fig = ax.figure
Object-Oriented / Dealing directly with ax
Option 3a
If you have the list of labels:
labels = ['One', 'Two', 'Three']
ax.set_xticks([1, 2, 3])
ax.set_xticklabels(labels, rotation=45, ha='right')
In later versions of Matplotlib (3.5+), you can just use set_xticks alone:
ax.set_xticks([1, 2, 3], labels, rotation=45, ha='right')
Option 3b
If you want to get the list of labels from the current plot:
# Unfortunately you need to draw your figure first to assign the labels,
# otherwise get_xticklabels() will return empty strings.
plt.draw()
ax.set_xticks(ax.get_xticks())
ax.set_xticklabels(ax.get_xticklabels(), rotation=45, ha='right')
As above, in later versions of Matplotlib (3.5+), you can just use set_xticks alone:
ax.set_xticks(ax.get_xticks(), ax.get_xticklabels(), rotation=45, ha='right')
Option 4
Similar to above, but loop through manually instead.
for label in ax.get_xticklabels():
label.set_rotation(45)
label.set_ha('right')
Option 5
We still use pyplot (as plt) here but it's object-oriented because we're changing the property of a specific ax object.
plt.setp(ax.get_xticklabels(), rotation=45, ha='right')
Option 6
This option is simple, but AFAIK you can't set label horizontal align this way so another option might be better if your angle is not 90.
ax.tick_params(axis='x', labelrotation=45)
Edit:
There's discussion of this exact "bug" but a fix hasn't been released (as of 3.4.0):
https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues/13774
Easy way
As described here, there is an existing method in the matplotlib.pyplot figure class that automatically rotates dates appropriately for you figure.
You can call it after you plot your data (i.e.ax.plot(dates,ydata) :
fig.autofmt_xdate()
If you need to format the labels further, checkout the above link.
Non-datetime objects
As per languitar's comment, the method I suggested for non-datetime xticks would not update correctly when zooming, etc. If it's not a datetime object used as your x-axis data, you should follow Tommy's answer:
for tick in ax.get_xticklabels():
tick.set_rotation(45)
Try pyplot.setp. I think you could do something like this:
x = range(len(time))
plt.xticks(x, time)
locs, labels = plt.xticks()
plt.setp(labels, rotation=90)
plt.plot(x, delay)
Appart from
plt.xticks(rotation=90)
this is also possible:
plt.xticks(rotation='vertical')
I came up with a similar example. Again, the rotation keyword is.. well, it's key.
from pylab import *
fig = figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.bar( [0,1,2], [1,3,5] )
ax.set_xticks( [ 0.5, 1.5, 2.5 ] )
ax.set_xticklabels( ['tom','dick','harry'], rotation=45 ) ;
If you want to apply rotation on the axes object, the easiest way is using tick_params. For example.
ax.tick_params(axis='x', labelrotation=90)
Matplotlib documentation reference here.
This is useful when you have an array of axes as returned by plt.subplots, and it is more convenient than using set_xticks because in that case you need to also set the tick labels, and also more convenient that those that iterate over the ticks (for obvious reasons)
If using plt:
plt.xticks(rotation=90)
In case of using pandas or seaborn to plot, assuming ax as axes for the plot:
ax.set_xticklabels(ax.get_xticklabels(), rotation=90)
Another way of doing the above:
for tick in ax.get_xticklabels():
tick.set_rotation(45)
My answer is inspired by cjohnson318's answer, but I didn't want to supply a hardcoded list of labels; I wanted to rotate the existing labels:
for tick in ax.get_xticklabels():
tick.set_rotation(45)
The simplest solution is to use:
plt.xticks(rotation=XX)
but also
# Tweak spacing to prevent clipping of tick-labels
plt.subplots_adjust(bottom=X.XX)
e.g for dates I used rotation=45 and bottom=0.20 but you can do some test for your data
import pylab as pl
pl.xticks(rotation = 90)
To rotate the x-axis label to 90 degrees
for tick in ax.get_xticklabels():
tick.set_rotation(45)
It will depend on what are you plotting.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x=['long_text_for_a_label_a',
'long_text_for_a_label_b',
'long_text_for_a_label_c']
y=[1,2,3]
myplot = plt.plot(x,y)
for item in myplot.axes.get_xticklabels():
item.set_rotation(90)
For pandas and seaborn that give you an Axes object:
df = pd.DataFrame(x,y)
#pandas
myplot = df.plot.bar()
#seaborn
myplotsns =sns.barplot(y='0', x=df.index, data=df)
# you can get xticklabels without .axes cause the object are already a
# isntance of it
for item in myplot.get_xticklabels():
item.set_rotation(90)
If you need to rotate labels you may need change the font size too, you can use font_scale=1.0 to do that.

matplotlib hatched and filled histograms

I would like to make histograms that are both hatched and filled (like these bar plots on the left in this matplotlib example):
Here's the code I tried to use:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.hist(values, bins, histtype='step', linewidth=2, facecolor='c', hatch='/')
But no matter whether I specify "facecolor" or "color", only the lines of the hatching appear in colour and the histogram is still unfilled. How can I make the hatching show up on top of a filled histogram?
In order to fill the area below the histogram the kwarg fill can be set to True. Then, the facecolor and edgecolor can be set in order to use different colors for the hatch and the background.
plt.hist(np.random.normal(size=500), bins=10, histtype='step', linewidth=2, facecolor='c',
hatch='/', edgecolor='k',fill=True)
This generates the following output:
histtype='step'draws step lines. They are by definition not filled (because they are lines.
Instead, use histtype='bar' (which is the default, so you may equally leave it out completely).

Add an extra information in a python plot?

Suppose we have a figure with three plots in it for three different parameters. But for the all three plots We have same temperature T=4K . Then how can I add this information in the figure?
I am not interested to write it in the Caption. I want it on the figure itself.
figtext would work well.
The advantage of figtext over text and annotate is that figtext defaults to using the figure coordinates, whereas the others default to using the coordinates of the axes (and therefore "T=4K" would move around if your axes are different between the different plots).
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.figure()
plt.xlim(-10, 10)
plt.ylim(0, .01)
plt.figtext(.8, .8, "T = 4K")
plt.show()
Here's a demonstration of using annotate. Check out this example for different styles of annotation.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
plt.ion()
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
x = np.linspace(0,4,100)
plt.plot(x,2*x)
plt.plot(x,x**2)
plt.plot(x,np.sqrt(8*x))
ax.annotate('T = 4K', xy=(2,4), xycoords='data',
xytext=(-100,60), textcoords='offset points',
arrowprops=dict(arrowstyle='fancy',fc='0.6',
connectionstyle="angle3,angleA=0,angleB=-90"))
plt.show()
raw_input()
figtext can make annotations at the bootom of multiple subplots figure like a comment independent of figures so you can make additional comments or remarks all in one picture. I was looking for this too. Thank you guys! :-)
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.figure(1)
plt.suptitle("SOME TITLE HERE")
#FIRST SUBPLOT
plt.subplot(311)
plt.ylabel(r"$a [m/s^2]$") # YOU CAN USE LaTeX TYPESETTING IN PYPLOT STRINGS!
plt.xlabel("time [s]")
plt.grid(True)
plt.plot(some_data)
# SECOND SUBPLOT
plt.subplot(312)
...
# THIRD SUBPLOT
plt.subplot(313)
...
# BOTTOM LABEL
plt.figtext(0.5, 0, "SOME LABEL BELOW ALL SUBPLOTS", ha="center", fontsize=7, bbox={"facecolor":"orange", "alpha":0.5, "pad":5})
# DRAW THE PLOT
plt.show()
Notre ha=center will center the string if x=0.5. You can also use fontsize and bbox parameters to change appearance of the string and its area.
Well, I'm not sure what you mean, but you can add text to the plot with the text() method.
Plot text in matplotlib pyplot
I suggest a grey horizontal zone around the T=4K zone
If you look at axhspan(ymin, ymax, xmin=0, xmax=1, **kwargs) in the matplotlib documentation for axes, you can make things like that:

Rotate axis text in python matplotlib

I can't figure out how to rotate the text on the X Axis. Its a time stamp, so as the number of samples increase, they get closer and closer until they overlap. I'd like to rotate the text 90 degrees so as the samples get closer together, they aren't overlapping.
Below is what I have, it works fine with the exception that I can't figure out how to rotate the X axis text.
import sys
import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('Agg')
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import datetime
font = {'family' : 'normal',
'weight' : 'bold',
'size' : 8}
matplotlib.rc('font', **font)
values = open('stats.csv', 'r').readlines()
time = [datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(float(i.split(',')[0].strip())) for i in values[1:]]
delay = [float(i.split(',')[1].strip()) for i in values[1:]]
plt.plot(time, delay)
plt.grid(b='on')
plt.savefig('test.png')
This works for me:
plt.xticks(rotation=90)
Many "correct" answers here but I'll add one more since I think some details are left out of several. The OP asked for 90 degree rotation but I'll change to 45 degrees because when you use an angle that isn't zero or 90, you should change the horizontal alignment as well; otherwise your labels will be off-center and a bit misleading (and I'm guessing many people who come here want to rotate axes to something other than 90).
Easiest / Least Code
Option 1
plt.xticks(rotation=45, ha='right')
As mentioned previously, that may not be desirable if you'd rather take the Object Oriented approach.
Option 2
Another fast way (it's intended for date objects but seems to work on any label; doubt this is recommended though):
fig.autofmt_xdate(rotation=45)
fig you would usually get from:
fig = plt.gcf()
fig = plt.figure()
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
fig = ax.figure
Object-Oriented / Dealing directly with ax
Option 3a
If you have the list of labels:
labels = ['One', 'Two', 'Three']
ax.set_xticks([1, 2, 3])
ax.set_xticklabels(labels, rotation=45, ha='right')
In later versions of Matplotlib (3.5+), you can just use set_xticks alone:
ax.set_xticks([1, 2, 3], labels, rotation=45, ha='right')
Option 3b
If you want to get the list of labels from the current plot:
# Unfortunately you need to draw your figure first to assign the labels,
# otherwise get_xticklabels() will return empty strings.
plt.draw()
ax.set_xticks(ax.get_xticks())
ax.set_xticklabels(ax.get_xticklabels(), rotation=45, ha='right')
As above, in later versions of Matplotlib (3.5+), you can just use set_xticks alone:
ax.set_xticks(ax.get_xticks(), ax.get_xticklabels(), rotation=45, ha='right')
Option 4
Similar to above, but loop through manually instead.
for label in ax.get_xticklabels():
label.set_rotation(45)
label.set_ha('right')
Option 5
We still use pyplot (as plt) here but it's object-oriented because we're changing the property of a specific ax object.
plt.setp(ax.get_xticklabels(), rotation=45, ha='right')
Option 6
This option is simple, but AFAIK you can't set label horizontal align this way so another option might be better if your angle is not 90.
ax.tick_params(axis='x', labelrotation=45)
Edit:
There's discussion of this exact "bug" but a fix hasn't been released (as of 3.4.0):
https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/issues/13774
Easy way
As described here, there is an existing method in the matplotlib.pyplot figure class that automatically rotates dates appropriately for you figure.
You can call it after you plot your data (i.e.ax.plot(dates,ydata) :
fig.autofmt_xdate()
If you need to format the labels further, checkout the above link.
Non-datetime objects
As per languitar's comment, the method I suggested for non-datetime xticks would not update correctly when zooming, etc. If it's not a datetime object used as your x-axis data, you should follow Tommy's answer:
for tick in ax.get_xticklabels():
tick.set_rotation(45)
Try pyplot.setp. I think you could do something like this:
x = range(len(time))
plt.xticks(x, time)
locs, labels = plt.xticks()
plt.setp(labels, rotation=90)
plt.plot(x, delay)
Appart from
plt.xticks(rotation=90)
this is also possible:
plt.xticks(rotation='vertical')
I came up with a similar example. Again, the rotation keyword is.. well, it's key.
from pylab import *
fig = figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.bar( [0,1,2], [1,3,5] )
ax.set_xticks( [ 0.5, 1.5, 2.5 ] )
ax.set_xticklabels( ['tom','dick','harry'], rotation=45 ) ;
If you want to apply rotation on the axes object, the easiest way is using tick_params. For example.
ax.tick_params(axis='x', labelrotation=90)
Matplotlib documentation reference here.
This is useful when you have an array of axes as returned by plt.subplots, and it is more convenient than using set_xticks because in that case you need to also set the tick labels, and also more convenient that those that iterate over the ticks (for obvious reasons)
If using plt:
plt.xticks(rotation=90)
In case of using pandas or seaborn to plot, assuming ax as axes for the plot:
ax.set_xticklabels(ax.get_xticklabels(), rotation=90)
Another way of doing the above:
for tick in ax.get_xticklabels():
tick.set_rotation(45)
My answer is inspired by cjohnson318's answer, but I didn't want to supply a hardcoded list of labels; I wanted to rotate the existing labels:
for tick in ax.get_xticklabels():
tick.set_rotation(45)
The simplest solution is to use:
plt.xticks(rotation=XX)
but also
# Tweak spacing to prevent clipping of tick-labels
plt.subplots_adjust(bottom=X.XX)
e.g for dates I used rotation=45 and bottom=0.20 but you can do some test for your data
import pylab as pl
pl.xticks(rotation = 90)
To rotate the x-axis label to 90 degrees
for tick in ax.get_xticklabels():
tick.set_rotation(45)
It will depend on what are you plotting.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x=['long_text_for_a_label_a',
'long_text_for_a_label_b',
'long_text_for_a_label_c']
y=[1,2,3]
myplot = plt.plot(x,y)
for item in myplot.axes.get_xticklabels():
item.set_rotation(90)
For pandas and seaborn that give you an Axes object:
df = pd.DataFrame(x,y)
#pandas
myplot = df.plot.bar()
#seaborn
myplotsns =sns.barplot(y='0', x=df.index, data=df)
# you can get xticklabels without .axes cause the object are already a
# isntance of it
for item in myplot.get_xticklabels():
item.set_rotation(90)
If you need to rotate labels you may need change the font size too, you can use font_scale=1.0 to do that.

Hiding axis text in matplotlib plots

I'm trying to plot a figure without tickmarks or numbers on either of the axes (I use axes in the traditional sense, not the matplotlib nomenclature!). An issue I have come across is where matplotlib adjusts the x(y)ticklabels by subtracting a value N, then adds N at the end of the axis.
This may be vague, but the following simplified example highlights the issue, with '6.18' being the offending value of N:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import random
prefix = 6.18
rx = [prefix+(0.001*random.random()) for i in arange(100)]
ry = [prefix+(0.001*random.random()) for i in arange(100)]
plt.plot(rx,ry,'ko')
frame1 = plt.gca()
for xlabel_i in frame1.axes.get_xticklabels():
xlabel_i.set_visible(False)
xlabel_i.set_fontsize(0.0)
for xlabel_i in frame1.axes.get_yticklabels():
xlabel_i.set_fontsize(0.0)
xlabel_i.set_visible(False)
for tick in frame1.axes.get_xticklines():
tick.set_visible(False)
for tick in frame1.axes.get_yticklines():
tick.set_visible(False)
plt.show()
The three things I would like to know are:
How to turn off this behaviour in the first place (although in most cases it is useful, it is not always!) I have looked through matplotlib.axis.XAxis and cannot find anything appropriate
How can I make N disappear (i.e. X.set_visible(False))
Is there a better way to do the above anyway? My final plot would be 4x4 subplots in a figure, if that is relevant.
Instead of hiding each element, you can hide the whole axis:
frame1.axes.get_xaxis().set_visible(False)
frame1.axes.get_yaxis().set_visible(False)
Or, you can set the ticks to an empty list:
frame1.axes.get_xaxis().set_ticks([])
frame1.axes.get_yaxis().set_ticks([])
In this second option, you can still use plt.xlabel() and plt.ylabel() to add labels to the axes.
If you want to hide just the axis text keeping the grid lines:
frame1 = plt.gca()
frame1.axes.xaxis.set_ticklabels([])
frame1.axes.yaxis.set_ticklabels([])
Doing set_visible(False) or set_ticks([]) will also hide the grid lines.
If you are like me and don't always retrieve the axes, ax, when plotting the figure, then a simple solution would be to do
plt.xticks([])
plt.yticks([])
I've colour coded this figure to ease the process.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
You can have full control over the figure using these commands, to complete the answer I've add also the control over the spines:
ax.spines['top'].set_visible(False)
ax.spines['right'].set_visible(False)
# X AXIS -BORDER
ax.spines['bottom'].set_visible(False)
# BLUE
ax.set_xticklabels([])
# RED
ax.set_xticks([])
# RED AND BLUE TOGETHER
ax.axes.get_xaxis().set_visible(False)
# Y AXIS -BORDER
ax.spines['left'].set_visible(False)
# YELLOW
ax.set_yticklabels([])
# GREEN
ax.set_yticks([])
# YELLOW AND GREEN TOGHETHER
ax.axes.get_yaxis().set_visible(False)
I was not actually able to render an image without borders or axis data based on any of the code snippets here (even the one accepted at the answer). After digging through some API documentation, I landed on this code to render my image
plt.axis('off')
plt.tick_params(axis='both', left=False, top=False, right=False, bottom=False, labelleft=False, labeltop=False, labelright=False, labelbottom=False)
plt.savefig('foo.png', dpi=100, bbox_inches='tight', pad_inches=0.0)
I used the tick_params call to basically shut down any extra information that might be rendered and I have a perfect graph in my output file.
Somewhat of an old thread but, this seems to be a faster method using the latest version of matplotlib:
set the major formatter for the x-axis
ax.xaxis.set_major_formatter(plt.NullFormatter())
One trick could be setting the color of tick labels as white to hide it!
plt.xticks(color='w')
plt.yticks(color='w')
or to be more generalized (#Armin Okić), you can set it as "None".
When using the object oriented API, the Axes object has two useful methods for removing the axis text, set_xticklabels() and set_xticks().
Say you create a plot using
fig, ax = plt.subplots(1)
ax.plot(x, y)
If you simply want to remove the tick labels, you could use
ax.set_xticklabels([])
or to remove the ticks completely, you could use
ax.set_xticks([])
These methods are useful for specifying exactly where you want the ticks and how you want them labeled. Passing an empty list results in no ticks, or no labels, respectively.
You could simply set xlabel to None, straight in your axis. Below an working example using seaborn
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns
tips = sns.load_dataset("tips")
ax = sns.boxplot(x="day", y="total_bill", data=tips)
ax.set(xlabel=None)
plt.show()
Just do this in case you have subplots
fig, axs = plt.subplots(1, 2, figsize=(16, 8))
ax[0].set_yticklabels([]) # x-axis
ax[0].set_xticklabels([]) # y-axis

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