See also the API Changes.
Below we describe several common approaches to plotting with Matplotlib.
matplotlib.pyplot
is a collection of command style functions that make
Matplotlib work like MATLAB. Each pyplot function makes some change to a
figure: e.g., creates a figure, creates a plotting area in a figure, plots
some lines in a plotting area, decorates the plot with labels, etc.
pyplot
is mainly intended for interactive plots and simple cases of
programmatic plot generation.
Further reading:
matplotlib.pyplot
function referenceAt its core, Matplotlib is object-oriented. We recommend directly working with the objects, if you need more control and customization of your plots.
In many cases you will create a Figure
and one or more
Axes
using pyplot.subplots
and from then on only work
on these objects. However, it's also possible to create Figure
s
explicitly (e.g. when including them in GUI applications).
Further reading:
matplotlib.axes.Axes
and matplotlib.figure.Figure
for an overview of
plotting functions.Warning
Since heavily importing into the global namespace may result in unexpected
behavior, the use of pylab is strongly discouraged. Use matplotlib.pyplot
instead.
pylab
is a module that includes matplotlib.pyplot
, numpy
and some additional functions within a single namespace. Its original purpose
was to mimic a MATLAB-like way of working by importing all functions into the
global namespace. This is considered bad style nowadays.
Matplotlib consists of the following submodules:
matplotlib
matplotlib.afm
matplotlib.animation
matplotlib.artist
matplotlib.axes
matplotlib.axis
matplotlib.backend_bases
matplotlib.backend_managers
matplotlib.backend_tools
matplotlib.backends
matplotlib.blocking_input
matplotlib.category
matplotlib.cbook
matplotlib.cm
matplotlib.collections
matplotlib.colorbar
matplotlib.colors
matplotlib.container
matplotlib.contour
matplotlib.dates
matplotlib.dviread
matplotlib.figure
matplotlib.font_manager
matplotlib.fontconfig_pattern
matplotlib.gridspec
matplotlib.image
matplotlib.legend
matplotlib.legend_handler
matplotlib.lines
matplotlib.markers
matplotlib.mathtext
matplotlib.mlab
matplotlib.offsetbox
matplotlib.patches
matplotlib.path
matplotlib.patheffects
matplotlib.pyplot
matplotlib.projections
matplotlib.projections.polar
matplotlib.rcsetup
matplotlib.sankey
matplotlib.scale
matplotlib.spines
matplotlib.style
matplotlib.table
matplotlib.testing
matplotlib.text
matplotlib.textpath
matplotlib.ticker
matplotlib.tight_layout
matplotlib.transforms
matplotlib.tri
matplotlib.type1font
matplotlib.units
matplotlib.widgets