How to show xticks for all 365 distinct tick labels on the X-axis using matplotlib?

Question

I have plotted two line plots. For Y-axis as the number of values are less, the Y-axis is clearly visible. However, for X-axis there are 365 values corresponding to 365 days of the year. For X-axis, the X-axis values look utterly cluttered. I have created a list which corresponds to 'month-day'(starting from 01-01 till 12-31 i.e. 1st January till 31st December) and these are the xticks. I tried to rotate tick labels for X-axis both by 45 and 90 degrees. But it further clutters the X-axis tick labels.

I am using matplotlib for plotting line plots. Is there a way to show the X-axis tick labels clearly for all 365 values on the X-axis?
This is the output plot I got with rotation 90 for tick labels:

Well, no, 365 tick labels can't be clearly readable on one axis. As you didn't provide any code, it is hard to guess how the plot was created nor which datatype was used for the x-axis. You could try to convert your x-values to real matplotlib dates (or to pandas dates, depending on how you're representing your data). — JohanC, Jun 14 '20 at 19:34

score -1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 17 '22 at 10:05

The 365 tick marks cannot be clearly readable on one axis. I suggest using multiple x-axes to show data at different scales. This will give at least some information about what and when is happening.

# pip install matplotlib
# pip install pandas
# pip install numpy

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.dates as mdates
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import random
from datetime import date

# set test data
start_date = date(2022, 1, 1)
end_date = date(2022, 12, 31)
x1 = np.random.uniform(low=20, high=40, size=(365)).astype(int)
x2 = np.random.uniform(low=-40, high=-20, size=(365)).astype(int)
labels = [date.fromordinal(i) for i in range(start_date.toordinal(), end_date.toordinal()+1)]
df = pd.DataFrame({'labels': labels, 'chart1': x1, 'chart2': x2})

# plot charts
fig, ax1 = plt.subplots(figsize=(20,5))
ax1.plot(df['labels'], df['chart1'], 'r')
ax1.plot(df['labels'], df['chart2'], 'b')
plt.fill_between(labels, x1, x2, alpha=0.10, color='b', interpolate=True)

# set 1st x-axis (DAYS) with interval in 4 days to make xticks values visible
ax1.xaxis.set_major_locator(mdates.DayLocator(interval=4))
ax1.xaxis.set_major_formatter(mdates.DateFormatter('%d'))
plt.xticks(rotation = 90)

# create a twin Axes sharing the yaxis
ax2, ax3, ax4 = ax1.twiny(), ax1.twiny(), ax1.twiny()

# Set 2nd x-axis (WEEK NUM)
ax2.xaxis.set_major_locator(mdates.WeekdayLocator())
ax2.xaxis.set_major_formatter(mdates.DateFormatter('%U'))
ax2.xaxis.set_ticks_position('bottom')
ax2.xaxis.set_label_position('bottom')
ax2.spines['bottom'].set_position(('outward', 50))
ax2.set_xlim(ax.get_xlim())


# Set 3rd x-axis (MONTH)
ax3.xaxis.set_major_locator(mdates.MonthLocator())
ax3.xaxis.set_major_formatter(mdates.DateFormatter('%b'))
ax3.xaxis.set_ticks_position('bottom')
ax3.xaxis.set_label_position('bottom')
ax3.spines['bottom'].set_position(('outward', 100))
ax3.set_xlim(ax.get_xlim())


# Set 4th x-axis (YEAR)
ax4.xaxis.set_major_locator(mdates.YearLocator())
ax4.xaxis.set_major_formatter(mdates.DateFormatter('%Y'))
ax4.xaxis.set_ticks_position('bottom')
ax4.xaxis.set_label_position('bottom')
ax4.spines['bottom'].set_position(('outward', 150))
ax4.set_xlim(ax.get_xlim())


# set labels for x-axes
ax1.set_xlabel('Day')
ax2.set_xlabel('Week num')
ax3.set_xlabel('Month')
ax4.set_xlabel('Year')

plt.show()

Returns

How to show xticks for all 365 distinct tick labels on the X-axis using matplotlib?

1 Answers1