CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpandasmatplotlib
user3595632
user3595632

Reputation: 5730

Why do two figure objects appear instead of one?

When I run this function,

def plot_data(df, title="", xlabel="", ylabel="", figsize=(12, 8), save_figure=False):
    from matplotlib.font_manager import FontProperties
    fontP = FontProperties()
    fontP.set_size('small')
    plt.xlabel(xlabel)
    plt.ylabel(ylabel)

    plt.legend(bbox_to_anchor=(1,1), loc='upper left', prop=fontP)
    plt.grid()

    df.plot()
    plt.show()

    if save_figure:
        plt.savefig(title)

the result looks like this:

enter image description here

I don't understand why two figure objects come up. And it looks like legend, grid are not applied appropriately...

Also, I want to clearly know about "when figure object created" or "how can I create just one figure object without confusion" kind of thing. Is there any good tutorial for this?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 106

Answers (1)

MSeifert
MSeifert

Reputation: 152657

That's because DataFrame.plot, by default, doesn't use the current active figure but creates a new figure. But that's just default behavior - You can override it by explicitly passing the active axes (ax argument) in:

df.plot(ax=plt.gca())  # gca stands for "get currently axes" instance

Or you can simply put the df.plot command at the top because (unlike df.plot) most plt functions modify the current active figure and some plt commands (e.g. legend) even won't work if there's no "plot" yet:

def plot_data(df, title="", xlabel="", ylabel="", figsize=(12, 8), save_figure=False):

    # Moved to the top
    df.plot()

    from matplotlib.font_manager import FontProperties
    fontP = FontProperties()
    fontP.set_size('small')
    plt.xlabel(xlabel)
    plt.ylabel(ylabel)

    plt.legend(bbox_to_anchor=(1,1), loc='upper left', prop=fontP)
    plt.grid()

    plt.show()

    if save_figure:
        plt.savefig(title)

Upvotes: 3

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