Develop Reference

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.

python matplotlib: how to move the scale to the other side of the axis?

I have this weird thing with the scale of the axis showing out of the figure like:
And what I want to have:
How can I move the scale to the other side of the axis?
x=range(len(ticks))
plt.plot(x,phase1,'r^-',label='$\Delta \phi(U1,I1)$')
plt.plot(x,phase2,'go-',label='$\Delta \phi(U2,I2)$')
plt.plot(x,phase3,'b*-',label='$\Delta \phi(U3,I3)$')
plt.xticks(x,ticks,rotation=45)
plt.xlabel('Messung')
plt.ylabel('$\Delta \phi [^\circ]$')
plt.legend()
plt.show()

The tick_params of your axis can be used to control axes label and ticks location. Set direction to in so that they point into the graph.
And here is a great example if you want different y-axis ranges and colours too.
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.tick_params(direction='in', length=6, width=2, colors='r', right=True, labelright='on')
plt.show()

You can use plt.tick_params() to adjust the behaviour of the ticks, documentation can be found here.
For your example you want the ticks to appear inside the figure. Therefore add
plt.tick_params(direction="in")
to your code. Example:
x=range(len(ticks))
plt.plot(x,phase1,'r^-',label='$\Delta \phi(U1,I1)$')
plt.plot(x,phase2,'go-',label='$\Delta \phi(U2,I2)$')
plt.plot(x,phase3,'b*-',label='$\Delta \phi(U3,I3)$')
plt.xticks(x,ticks,rotation=45)
plt.xlabel('Messung')
plt.ylabel('$\Delta \phi [^\circ]$')
plt.legend()
plt.tick_params(direction="in") # Set ticks inside the figure
plt.show()
You can get the ticks to appear on the top and right side of the figure too as shown in your second screenshot by adding:
plt.tick_params(direction="in",top="on",right="on")
If you wanted to make all figures in your Python script have this behaviour then you can add the following at the top of your script (this might be of interest):
import matplotlib
matplotlib.rcParams['xtick.direction'] = "in"
matplotlib.rcParams['ytick.direction'] = "in"
This will save you having to call plt.tick_params() for each figure, which is helpful if you generate lots of figures.

Change distance between boxplots in the same figure in python [duplicate]

I'm drawing the bloxplot shown below using python and matplotlib. Is there any way I can reduce the distance between the two boxplots on the X axis?
This is the code that I'm using to get the figure above:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib import rcParams
rcParams['ytick.direction'] = 'out'
rcParams['xtick.direction'] = 'out'
fig = plt.figure()
xlabels = ["CG", "EG"]
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.boxplot([values_cg, values_eg])
ax.set_xticks(np.arange(len(xlabels))+1)
ax.set_xticklabels(xlabels, rotation=45, ha='right')
fig.subplots_adjust(bottom=0.3)
ylabels = yticks = np.linspace(0, 20, 5)
ax.set_yticks(yticks)
ax.set_yticklabels(ylabels)
ax.tick_params(axis='x', pad=10)
ax.tick_params(axis='y', pad=10)
plt.savefig(os.path.join(output_dir, "output.pdf"))
And this is an example closer to what I'd like to get visually (although I wouldn't mind if the boxplots were even a bit closer to each other):

You can either change the aspect ratio of plot or use the widths kwarg (doc) as such:
ax.boxplot([values_cg, values_eg], widths=1)
to make the boxes wider.

Try changing the aspect ratio using
ax.set_aspect(1.5) # or some other float
The larger then number, the narrower (and taller) the plot should be:
a circle will be stretched such that the height is num times the width. aspect=1 is the same as aspect=’equal’.
http://matplotlib.org/api/axes_api.html#matplotlib.axes.Axes.set_aspect

When your code writes:
ax.set_xticks(np.arange(len(xlabels))+1)
You're putting the first box plot on 0 and the second one on 1 (event though you change the tick labels afterwards), just like in the second, "wanted" example you gave they are set on 1,2,3.
So i think an alternative solution would be to play with the xticks position and the xlim of the plot.
for example using
ax.set_xlim(-1.5,2.5)
would place them closer.

positions : array-like, optional
Sets the positions of the boxes. The ticks and limits are automatically set to match the positions. Defaults to range(1, N+1) where N is the number of boxes to be drawn.
https://matplotlib.org/3.1.1/api/_as_gen/matplotlib.pyplot.boxplot.html
This should do the job!

As #Stevie mentioned, you can use the positions kwarg (doc) to manually set the x-coordinates of the boxes:
ax.boxplot([values_cg, values_eg], positions=[1, 1.3])

Preventing xticks from overlapping yticks

How can I prevent the labels of xticks from overlapping with the labels of yticks when using hist (or other plotting commands) in matplotlib?

There are several ways.
One is to use the tight_layout method of the figure you are drawing, which will automatically try to optimize the appareance of the labels.
fig, ax = subplots(1)
ax.plot(arange(10),rand(10))
fig.tight_layout()
An other way is to modify the rcParams values for the ticks formatting:
rcParams['xtick.major.pad'] = 6
This will draw the ticks a little farter from the axes. after modifying the rcparams (this of any other, you can find the complete list on your matplotlibrc configuration file), remember to set it back to deafult with the rcdefaults function.
A third way is to tamper with the axes locator_params telling it to not draw the label in the corner:
fig, ax = subplots(1)
ax.plot(arange(10),rand(10))
ax.locator_params(prune='lower',axis='both')
the axis keywords tell the locator on which axis it should work and the prune keyword tell it to remove the lowest value of the tick

Try increasing the padding between the ticks on the labels
import matplotlib
matplotlib.rcParams['xtick.major.pad'] = 8 # defaults are 4
matplotlib.rcParams['ytick.major.pad'] = 8
same goes for [x|y]tick.minor.pad.
Also, try setting: [x|y]tick.direction to 'out'. That gives you a little more room and helps makes the ticks a little more visible -- especially on histograms with dark bars.

Space between Y-axis and First X tick

Matplotlib newbie here.
I have the following code:
from pylab import figure, show
import numpy
fig = figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
plot_data=[1.7,1.7,1.7,1.54,1.52]
xdata = range(len(plot_data))
labels = ["2009-June","2009-Dec","2010-June","2010-Dec","2011-June"]
ax.plot(xdata,plot_data,"b-")
ax.set_xticks(range(len(labels)))
ax.set_xticklabels(labels)
ax.set_yticks([1.4,1.6,1.8])
fig.canvas.draw()
show()
When you run that code, the resulting chart has a run-in with the first tick label (2009-June) and the origin. How can I get the graph to move over to make that more readable? I tried to put dummy data in, but then Matplotlib (correctly) treats that as data.

add two limits to the x and y axes to shift the tick labels a bit.
# grow the y axis down by 0.05
ax.set_ylim(1.35, 1.8)
# expand the x axis by 0.5 at two ends
ax.set_xlim(-0.5, len(labels)-0.5)
the result is

Because tick labels are text objects you can change their alignment. However to get access to the text properties you need to go through the set_yticklabels function. So add the line:
ax.set_yticklabels([1.4,1.6,1.8],va="bottom")
after your set_yticks call. Alternatively if you go through the pylab library directly, instead of accessing the function through the axes object, you can just set that in one line:
pylab.yticks([1.4,1.6,1.8],va="bottom")

I suggest change Y axis limits:
ax.set_ylim([1.2, 1.8])