Plotting time in Python with Matplotlib

python graph plot matplotlib
randomThought picture randomThought · Oct 15, 2009 · Viewed 380.4k times · Source

I have an array of timestamps in the format (HH:MM:SS.mmmmmm) and another array of floating point numbers, each corresponding to a value in the timestamp array.

Can I plot time on the x axis and the numbers on the y-axis using Matplotlib?

I was trying to, but somehow it was only accepting arrays of floats. How can I get it to plot the time? Do I have to modify the format in any way?

Answer

codeape picture codeape · Oct 15, 2009

You must first convert your timestamps to Python datetime objects (use datetime.strptime). Then use date2num to convert the dates to matplotlib format.

Plot the dates and values using plot_date:

dates = matplotlib.dates.date2num(list_of_datetimes)
matplotlib.pyplot.plot_date(dates, values)

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