CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonmatplotlibaxis-labels
CAPSLOCK
CAPSLOCK

Reputation: 6483

Matplotlib xticks labels: how to modify attributes value

Following this I know that I can extract the xticks labels and positions using:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.scatter(x_data, y_data)
locs, labels=plt.xticks()

the new variable labels is a matplotlib.cbook.silent_list, which doesn't behave like a normal list. Is there a way to access and modify any attribute value of the labels elements?
Specifically I would like to know if I can select a subset of the labels (i.e. slice the silent_list) and modify a particular attribute for that subset.

Here is a toy example:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

x=np.array([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8])
y=np.random.normal(0, 1, (8, 1))
plt.scatter(x, y)
locs, labels=plt.xticks()

As an example, let say I want to change the labels color to red for all but the first and last element of labels; if I open one of the elements of the variable I can see that there is the attribute _color with value k, which I would like to change in r:

here

I tried to slice it:

labels[1:-1]

But it returns:

Out[]: [Text(2,0,'2'), Text(4,0,'4'), Text(6,0,'6'), Text(8,0,'8')]

and this is as far as I managed to go.
I couldn't figure out a way to access the attribute and change its value.

NB: I am looking for a general way to access these attributes and change the value, I do not care about changing the labels color specifically. That's just an example.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1371

Answers (1)

Sheldore
Sheldore

Reputation: 39042

You might be interested in an alternative solution where you can choose which specific ticks you want to color. Here I have to loop from [1:-1] because the first and the last ticks do not appear on the graph here but they appear in the labels

import numpy as np; np.random.seed(134)
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig, ax = plt.subplots()

x=np.array([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8])
y=np.random.normal(0, 1, (8, 1))
plt.scatter(x, y)

fig.canvas.draw()
xticks = ax.get_xticklabels()

target_ticks = [1, 3, 6, len(xticks)-2]

for i, lab in enumerate(xticks[1:-1]):
    if i+1 in target_ticks:
        lab.set_color('r')

enter image description here

Upvotes: 2

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