CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonmatplotlib
Alberto
Alberto

Reputation: 372

Issue with get_yticklabels in matplotlib

I am using matplotlib to plot a bar graph, and I am experiencing an issue when I try to access the labels (both on the X and Y axis) to change them. In particular, this code:

fig = plot.figure(figsize=(16,12), dpi=(300))
ax1 = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax1.set_ylabel("simulated quantity")
ax1.set_xlabel("simulated peptides - from most to least abundant")

# create the bars, and set a different color for the bars referring to experimental peptides
barlist = ax1.bar( numpy.arange(len(quantities)), [numpy.log10(x) for x in quantities] )
for index, peptide in enumerate(peptides) :
        if peptide in experimentalPeptidesP or peptide in experimentalPeptidesUP :
                barlist[index].set_color('b')

labelsY = ax1.get_yticklabels(which='both')
print "These are the label objects on the Y axis:", labelsY
print "These are the labels on the Y axis:", [item.get_text() for item in ax1.get_xticklabels(    which='both')]
for label in labelsY : label.set_text("AAAAA")
ax1.set_yticklabels(labelsY)

Gives the following output:

These are the label objects on the Y axis: <a list of 8 Text yticklabel objects>
These are the labels on the Y axis: [u'', u'', u'', u'', u'', u'']

And the resulting figure has "AAAAA" as the text of every label on the Y axis, as requested. My issue is, while I am able to correctly SET the labels, apparently I cannot GET their text...and the text should exist, because if I don't replace the labels with "AAAAA" I get the following figure: enter image description here

As you can see, there are labels on the Y axis, and I'd need to "get" their text. Where is the error?

Thank you in advance for your help.

EDIT: Thanks to Mike Müller's answer, I managed to make it work. Apparently, in my case invoking draw() is not enough, I have to get the values AFTER saving the figure using savefig(). It might depend on matplotlib's version, I am running 1.5.1 and Mike is running 1.5.0 . I will also take a look at FuncFormatter, as suggested below by tcaswell

Upvotes: 4

Views: 3644

Answers (1)

Mike M&#252;ller
Mike M&#252;ller

Reputation: 85492

You need to render the plot first to actually get labels. Adding a draw()works:

plot.draw()
labelsY = ax1.get_yticklabels(which='both')

Without:

from matplotlib import pyplot as plt

fig = plt.figure(figsize=(16,12), dpi=(300))
ax1 = fig.add_subplot(111)
p = ax1.bar(range(5), range(5))

>>> [item.get_text() for item in ax1.get_yticklabels(which='both')]
['', '', '', '', '', '', '', '', '']

and with draw():

from matplotlib import pyplot as plt

fig = plt.figure(figsize=(16,12), dpi=(300))
ax1 = fig.add_subplot(111)
p = ax1.bar(range(5), range(5))
plt.draw()

>>> [item.get_text() for item in ax1.get_yticklabels(which='both')]
['0.0', '0.5', '1.0', '1.5', '2.0', '2.5', '3.0', '3.5', '4.0']

Upvotes: 7

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