Labels above grouped bar chart

Question

Problem

I am generating a bar chart and would like to display the height of each bar above the bar itself (Ydata). So for the following picture which is an example, I would like to have labels above the charts. I couldnt find a solution to this. For your information I am using Matlab R2016a.

Code

Currently I am using the following code to create my chart.

   x={ '-5-0' '0-5' '5-10' '10-15' '15-20' '20-25' '25-30' '30-35' '35-40' '40-45' '45-50' '50-55'};
before= [0 27 28 18 9 6 5 3 2 1 1 0]
after= [27 28 18 9 6 5 3 2 1 1 0 0]
y=[before',after']

h=figure;
hold on
yyaxis left
l1=bar([1:12],y,'grouped');

hYLabel=ylabel('Tonnage [%]');
yyaxis right
hylabel=ylabel('Tonnage [%]');
l1(1).FaceColor = [ 0    0.447  0.7410];
l1(1).EdgeColor = [ 0    0.447  0.7410];
l1(2).FaceColor =[0.85 0.325 0.098]
l1(2).EdgeColor =[0.85 0.325 0.098]
hTitle=title('Test');
hXLabel = xlabel('Value [$/t]');
hLegend=legend([l1(1),l1(2)], 'Test1', 'Test2');
set([gca,hTitle,hXLabel,hYLabel,hLegend] , 'FontName'   , 'Helvetica','FontSize', 8) 
set(hTitle,'FontSize', 11) 
set(hLegend,'Fontsize',8,'Location', 'southoutside', 'Orientation','horizontal')
set(gca,'XTick',[1:12])
xlim([0.5 12.5])
set(gca,'xticklabel',x.')
set(gca,'LineWidth',1.0)

hold off

What I am looking for Quick illustration of what I am looking for. Obviously I want a label above each column. Any help would be very appreciated.

EBH · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-08T14:52:43.057

After your line:

l1=bar([1:12],y,'grouped');

add following lines:

x_shift = 0.15;
text([1:12]-x_shift,y(:,1)+1,num2str(y(:,1)),...
    'FontSize',12,'HorizontalAlignment','Center','Color',[0 0.447  0.7410])
text([1:12]+x_shift,y(:,2)+1,num2str(y(:,2)),...
    'FontSize',12,'HorizontalAlignment','Center','Color',[0.85 0.325 0.098])

And you will get:

if you want the percentage format, and also rotation, then the x_shift need to be adjusted a little bit more, and also the y-axis limits, so I bring here the full code for that:

x={'-5-0' '0-5' '5-10' '10-15' '15-20' '20-25' '25-30' '30-35'...
    '35-40' '40-45' '45-50' '50-55'};
before= [0 27 28 18 9 6 5 3 2 1 1 0];
after= [27 28 18 9 6 5 3 2 1 1 0 0];
y=[before',after'];
ax = axes('xticklabel',x.','LineWidth',1.0,'XTick',1:12);
yyaxis(ax,'left')
l1 = bar(ax,y,'grouped');
x1_shift = -0.17;
x2_shift = 0.11;
text([1:12]+x1_shift,y(:,1)+1,[num2str(y(:,1)) repmat('%',numel(y(:,1)),1)],...
    'FontSize',12,'Rotation',90,'HorizontalAlignment','left',...
    'VerticalAlignment','middle','Color',[0 0.447  0.7410])
text([1:12]+x2_shift,y(:,2)+1,[num2str(y(:,2)) repmat('%',numel(y(:,2)),1)],...
    'FontSize',12,'Rotation',90,'HorizontalAlignment','left',...
    'VerticalAlignment','middle','Color',[0.85 0.325 0.098])
ylabel('Tonnage [%]','FontName','Helvetica','FontSize',8);
ylim([0 35])
yyaxis(ax,'right')
ylabel('Tonnage [%]','FontName','Helvetica','FontSize',8);
l1(1).FaceColor = [0 0.447  0.7410];
l1(1).EdgeColor = [0 0.447  0.7410];
l1(2).FaceColor = [0.85 0.325 0.098];
l1(2).EdgeColor = [0.85 0.325 0.098];
title('Test','FontName','Helvetica','FontSize', 11);
xlabel('Value [$/t]', 'FontName'   , 'Helvetica','FontSize', 8);
hLegend = legend([l1(1),l1(2)], 'Test1', 'Test2');
set(hLegend,'Location','southoutside','Orientation','horizontal',...
    'FontName', 'Helvetica','FontSize', 8)
xlim([0.5 12.5])
ylim([0 35])
box off

you will notice I changed your code a little, to make it more compact, but essentially it does the same, and yields the following bar:

the labels here will be placed in the same position (relative to the bars) even if you resize the graph.

Thanks for that answer, but is there no way of getting them completly centered even if you change the size of the figure ? — KiW, Sep 08 '16 at 10:15
@KiW I have edited the code above so that the labels will stay centered. I also added the rotation and percentage format if you want these. — EBH, Sep 08 '16 at 14:53

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

You can use something like in this post Add before hold off this line:
text(1 , y(1,1)+30, ['y = ', num2str(10)], 'VerticalAlignment', 'top', 'FontSize', 8)
Now you can play with the parameters and put it into a for loop to add labels over evrey bar.

Edit:
If I understood you right, this is what you wanted?
Add the following before hold off

xt1=[1:12]-0.17;
xt2=[1:12]+0.11;
yt1=before+0.2;
yt2=after+0.2;

for i=1:12
    text(xt1(i) , yt1(i), [num2str(y(i,1)), '%'], 'rotation', 90, 'FontSize', 6, 'Color',[0 0.447  0.7410])
    text(xt2(i) , yt2(i), [num2str(y(i,2)), '%'], 'rotation', 90, 'FontSize', 6, 'Color',[0.85 0.325 0.098])
end

Now you can also change the size of the figure and the texts stay at the desired position.
The result looks like the following: By the way, I had only access to Matlab2015, so I couldn't use every feature of yours, but the code should be fine on Matlab2016

Any ideas on how to get the label exactly in the middle if I want my figure to be 15.75 cm wide? — KiW, Sep 07 '16 at 18:00
I edited my initial post. Hope this is now what you are looking for. — chron0x, Sep 08 '16 at 12:58

Labels above grouped bar chart

2 Answers2