I'm trying to update a graph in real time from an updating .txt Notepad++ file. In other words, random numbers are printed to the text file, then the python script reads the numbers from the text file and plots it.
I assumed that Multi-threading would be required so the two functions can run at the same time. I'm using the schedule module so I can print random numbers onto the text file every 3 seconds. Here is my code:
import random
import schedule
import time
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.animation as animation
from threading import Thread
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(1, 1, 1)
def gen_text():
num1 = random.randint(1, 100)
num2 = random.randint(1, 100)
print(str(num1) + ',' + str(num2), file=open('TEXT FILE', 'a'))
schedule.every(3).seconds.do(gen_text)
pull_data = open('TEXT FILE', 'r').read()
def animate(i):
data_array = pull_data.split('\n')
xar = []
yar = []
for each_line in data_array:
if len(each_line) > 1:
x, y = each_line.split(',')
xar.append(int(x))
yar.append(int(y))
ax.clear()
ax.plot(xar, yar)
if __name__ == '__main__':
Thread(target=animate).start()
Thread(target=gen_text).start()
ani = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, animate, interval=3000)
plt.show()
while True:
schedule.run_pending()
for line in pull_data:
Type = line.split(",")
x = Type[0]
y = Type[1]
print(x, y)
This code just shows a Matplotlib graph with lines plotted from previous runs of the code. Not an updating real-time one. Is multi-threading the correct approach? If not, then how could I solve this?
