graph – Plotting time in Python with Matplotlib

graph – Plotting time in Python with Matplotlib

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:

import matplotlib.pyplot
import matplotlib.dates

from datetime import datetime

x_values = [datetime(2021, 11, 18, 12), datetime(2021, 11, 18, 14), datetime(2021, 11, 18, 16)]
y_values = [1.0, 3.0, 2.0]

dates = matplotlib.dates.date2num(x_values)
matplotlib.pyplot.plot_date(dates, y_values)

You can also plot the timestamp, value pairs using pyplot.plot (after parsing them from their string representation). (Tested with matplotlib versions 1.2.0 and 1.3.1.)

Example:

import datetime
import random
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# make up some data
x = [datetime.datetime.now() + datetime.timedelta(hours=i) for i in range(12)]
y = [i+random.gauss(0,1) for i,_ in enumerate(x)]

# plot
plt.plot(x,y)
# beautify the x-labels
plt.gcf().autofmt_xdate()

plt.show()

Resulting image:

---

Heres the same as a scatter plot:

import datetime
import random
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# make up some data
x = [datetime.datetime.now() + datetime.timedelta(hours=i) for i in range(12)]
y = [i+random.gauss(0,1) for i,_ in enumerate(x)]

# plot
plt.scatter(x,y)
# beautify the x-labels
plt.gcf().autofmt_xdate()

plt.show()

Produces an image similar to this:

graph – Plotting time in Python with Matplotlib

7 years later and this code has helped me.
However, my times still were not showing up correctly.

Using Matplotlib 2.0.0 and I had to add the following bit of code from Editing the date formatting of x-axis tick labels in matplotlib by Paul H.

import matplotlib.dates as mdates
myFmt = mdates.DateFormatter(%d)
ax.xaxis.set_major_formatter(myFmt)

I changed the format to (%H:%M) and the time displayed correctly.

All thanks to the community.