matplotlib.legend

The legend module defines the Legend class, which is responsible for drawing legends associated with axes and/or figures.

Important

It is unlikely that you would ever create a Legend instance manually. Most users would normally create a legend via the legend() function. For more details on legends there is also a legend guide.

The Legend class can be considered as a container of legend handles and legend texts. Creation of corresponding legend handles from the plot elements in the axes or figures (e.g., lines, patches, etc.) are specified by the handler map, which defines the mapping between the plot elements and the legend handlers to be used (the default legend handlers are defined in the legend_handler module). Note that not all kinds of artist are supported by the legend yet by default but it is possible to extend the legend handler's capabilities to support arbitrary objects. See the legend guide for more information.

class matplotlib.legend.DraggableLegend(legend, use_blit=False, update='loc')

Bases: matplotlib.offsetbox.DraggableOffsetBox

Wrapper around a Legend to support mouse dragging.

Parameters:

legend : Legend

The Legend instance to wrap.

use_blit : bool, optional

Use blitting for faster image composition. For details see FuncAnimation.

update : {'loc', 'bbox'}, optional

If "loc", update the loc parameter of the legend upon finalizing. If "bbox", update the bbox_to_anchor parameter.

artist_picker(self, legend, evt)

finalize_offset(self)

class matplotlib.legend.Legend(parent, handles, labels, loc=None, numpoints=None, markerscale=None, markerfirst=True, scatterpoints=None, scatteryoffsets=None, prop=None, fontsize=None, borderpad=None, labelspacing=None, handlelength=None, handleheight=None, handletextpad=None, borderaxespad=None, columnspacing=None, ncol=1, mode=None, fancybox=None, shadow=None, title=None, title_fontsize=None, framealpha=None, edgecolor=None, facecolor=None, bbox_to_anchor=None, bbox_transform=None, frameon=None, handler_map=None)

Bases: matplotlib.artist.Artist

Place a legend on the axes at location loc.

Parameters:

parent : Axes or Figure

The artist that contains the legend.

handles : sequence of Artist

A list of Artists (lines, patches) to be added to the legend.

labels : sequence of strings

A list of labels to show next to the artists. The length of handles and labels should be the same. If they are not, they are truncated to the smaller of both lengths.

Other Parameters:

loc : str or pair of floats, default: rcParams["legend.loc"] (default: 'best') ('best' for axes, 'upper right' for figures)

The location of the legend.

The strings 'upper left', 'upper right', 'lower left', 'lower right' place the legend at the corresponding corner of the axes/figure.

The strings 'upper center', 'lower center', 'center left', 'center right' place the legend at the center of the corresponding edge of the axes/figure.

The string 'center' places the legend at the center of the axes/figure.

The string 'best' places the legend at the location, among the nine locations defined so far, with the minimum overlap with other drawn artists. This option can be quite slow for plots with large amounts of data; your plotting speed may benefit from providing a specific location.

The location can also be a 2-tuple giving the coordinates of the lower-left corner of the legend in axes coordinates (in which case bbox_to_anchor will be ignored).

For back-compatibility, 'center right' (but no other location) can also be spelled 'right', and each "string" locations can also be given as a numeric value:

Location String	Location Code
'best'	0
'upper right'	1
'upper left'	2
'lower left'	3
'lower right'	4
'right'	5
'center left'	6
'center right'	7
'lower center'	8
'upper center'	9
'center'	10

bbox_to_anchor : BboxBase, 2-tuple, or 4-tuple of floats

Box that is used to position the legend in conjunction with loc. Defaults to axes.bbox (if called as a method to Axes.legend) or figure.bbox (if Figure.legend). This argument allows arbitrary placement of the legend.

Bbox coordinates are interpreted in the coordinate system given by bbox_transform, with the default transform Axes or Figure coordinates, depending on which legend is called.

If a 4-tuple or BboxBase is given, then it specifies the bbox (x, y, width, height) that the legend is placed in. To put the legend in the best location in the bottom right quadrant of the axes (or figure):

loc='best', bbox_to_anchor=(0.5, 0., 0.5, 0.5)

A 2-tuple (x, y) places the corner of the legend specified by loc at x, y. For example, to put the legend's upper right-hand corner in the center of the axes (or figure) the following keywords can be used:

loc='upper right', bbox_to_anchor=(0.5, 0.5)

ncol : integer

The number of columns that the legend has. Default is 1.

prop : None or matplotlib.font_manager.FontProperties or dict

The font properties of the legend. If None (default), the current matplotlib.rcParams will be used.

fontsize : int or float or {'xx-small', 'x-small', 'small', 'medium', 'large', 'x-large', 'xx-large'}

Controls the font size of the legend. If the value is numeric the size will be the absolute font size in points. String values are relative to the current default font size. This argument is only used if prop is not specified.

numpoints : None or int

The number of marker points in the legend when creating a legend entry for a Line2D (line). Default is None, which will take the value from rcParams["legend.numpoints"] (default: 1).

scatterpoints : None or int

The number of marker points in the legend when creating a legend entry for a PathCollection (scatter plot). Default is None, which will take the value from rcParams["legend.scatterpoints"] (default: 1).

scatteryoffsets : iterable of floats

The vertical offset (relative to the font size) for the markers created for a scatter plot legend entry. 0.0 is at the base the legend text, and 1.0 is at the top. To draw all markers at the same height, set to [0.5]. Default is [0.375, 0.5, 0.3125].

markerscale : None or int or float

The relative size of legend markers compared with the originally drawn ones. Default is None, which will take the value from rcParams["legend.markerscale"] (default: 1.0).

markerfirst : bool

If True, legend marker is placed to the left of the legend label. If False, legend marker is placed to the right of the legend label. Default is True.

frameon : None or bool

Control whether the legend should be drawn on a patch (frame). Default is None, which will take the value from rcParams["legend.frameon"] (default: True).

fancybox : None or bool

Control whether round edges should be enabled around the FancyBboxPatch which makes up the legend's background. Default is None, which will take the value from rcParams["legend.fancybox"] (default: True).

shadow : None or bool

Control whether to draw a shadow behind the legend. Default is None, which will take the value from rcParams["legend.shadow"] (default: False).

framealpha : None or float

Control the alpha transparency of the legend's background. Default is None, which will take the value from rcParams["legend.framealpha"] (default: 0.8). If shadow is activated and framealpha is None, the default value is ignored.

facecolor : None or "inherit" or a color spec

Control the legend's background color. Default is None, which will take the value from rcParams["legend.facecolor"] (default: 'inherit'). If "inherit", it will take rcParams["axes.facecolor"] (default: 'white').

edgecolor : None or "inherit" or a color spec

Control the legend's background patch edge color. Default is None, which will take the value from rcParams["legend.edgecolor"] (default: '0.8') If "inherit", it will take rcParams["axes.edgecolor"] (default: 'black').

mode : {"expand", None}

If mode is set to "expand" the legend will be horizontally expanded to fill the axes area (or bbox_to_anchor if defines the legend's size).

bbox_transform : None or matplotlib.transforms.Transform

The transform for the bounding box (bbox_to_anchor). For a value of None (default) the Axes' transAxes transform will be used.

title : str or None

The legend's title. Default is no title (None).

title_fontsize: str or None

The fontsize of the legend's title. Default is the default fontsize.

borderpad : float or None

The fractional whitespace inside the legend border. Measured in font-size units. Default is None, which will take the value from rcParams["legend.borderpad"] (default: 0.4).

labelspacing : float or None

The vertical space between the legend entries. Measured in font-size units. Default is None, which will take the value from rcParams["legend.labelspacing"] (default: 0.5).

handlelength : float or None

The length of the legend handles. Measured in font-size units. Default is None, which will take the value from rcParams["legend.handlelength"] (default: 2.0).

handletextpad : float or None

The pad between the legend handle and text. Measured in font-size units. Default is None, which will take the value from rcParams["legend.handletextpad"] (default: 0.8).

borderaxespad : float or None

The pad between the axes and legend border. Measured in font-size units. Default is None, which will take the value from rcParams["legend.borderaxespad"] (default: 0.5).

columnspacing : float or None

The spacing between columns. Measured in font-size units. Default is None, which will take the value from rcParams["legend.columnspacing"] (default: 2.0).

handler_map : dict or None

The custom dictionary mapping instances or types to a legend handler. This handler_map updates the default handler map found at matplotlib.legend.Legend.get_legend_handler_map().

Notes

Users can specify any arbitrary location for the legend using the bbox_to_anchor keyword argument. bbox_to_anchor can be an instance of BboxBase(or its derivatives) or a tuple of 2 or 4 floats. See set_bbox_to_anchor() for more detail.

The legend location can be specified by setting loc with a tuple of 2 floats, which is interpreted as the lower-left corner of the legend in the normalized axes coordinate.

codes = {'best': 0, 'center': 10, 'center left': 6, 'center right': 7, 'lower center': 8, 'lower left': 3, 'lower right': 4, 'right': 5, 'upper center': 9, 'upper left': 2, 'upper right': 1}

contains(self, event)

Test whether the artist contains the mouse event.

Parameters:

mouseevent : matplotlib.backend_bases.MouseEvent

Returns:

contains : bool

Whether any values are within the radius.

details : dict

An artist-specific dictionary of details of the event context, such as which points are contained in the pick radius. See the individual Artist subclasses for details.

See also

set_contains, get_contains

draw(self, renderer)

Draw everything that belongs to the legend.

draw_frame(self, b)

Set draw frame to b.

Parameters:

b : bool

get_bbox_to_anchor(self)

Return the bbox that the legend will be anchored to.

get_children(self)

Return a list of child artists.

classmethod get_default_handler_map()

A class method that returns the default handler map.

get_draggable(self)

Return True if the legend is draggable, False otherwise.

get_frame(self)

Return the Rectangle instances used to frame the legend.

get_frame_on(self)

Get whether the legend box patch is drawn.

static get_legend_handler(legend_handler_map, orig_handle)

Return a legend handler from legend_handler_map that corresponds to orig_handler.

legend_handler_map should be a dictionary object (that is returned by the get_legend_handler_map method).

It first checks if the orig_handle itself is a key in the legend_handler_map and return the associated value. Otherwise, it checks for each of the classes in its method-resolution-order. If no matching key is found, it returns None.

get_legend_handler_map(self)

Return the handler map.

get_lines(self)

Return a list of Line2D instances in the legend.

get_patches(self)

Return a list of Patch instances in the legend.

get_texts(self)

Return a list of Text instances in the legend.

get_tightbbox(self, renderer)

Like Legend.get_window_extent, but uses the box for the legend.

Parameters:

renderer : RendererBase instance

renderer that will be used to draw the figures (i.e. fig.canvas.get_renderer())

Returns:

`.BboxBase` : containing the bounding box in figure pixel co-ordinates.

get_title(self)

Return the Text instance for the legend title.

get_window_extent(self, renderer=None)

Return extent of the legend.

set_bbox_to_anchor(self, bbox, transform=None)

Set the bbox that the legend will be anchored to.

bbox can be

• A BboxBase instance
• A tuple of (left, bottom, width, height) in the given transform (normalized axes coordinate if None)
• A tuple of (left, bottom) where the width and height will be assumed to be zero.

classmethod set_default_handler_map(handler_map)

A class method to set the default handler map.

set_draggable(self, state, use_blit=False, update='loc')

Enable or disable mouse dragging support of the legend.

Parameters:

state : bool

Whether mouse dragging is enabled.

use_blit : bool, optional

Use blitting for faster image composition. For details see FuncAnimation.

update : {'loc', 'bbox'}, optional

The legend parameter to be changed when dragged:

• 'loc': update the loc parameter of the legend
• 'bbox': update the bbox_to_anchor parameter of the legend

Returns:

If state is True this returns the DraggableLegend helper

instance. Otherwise this returns None.

set_frame_on(self, b)

Set whether the legend box patch is drawn.

Parameters:

b : bool

set_title(self, title, prop=None)

Set the legend title. Fontproperties can be optionally set with prop parameter.

classmethod update_default_handler_map(handler_map)

A class method to update the default handler map.

zorder = 5