.. only:: html .. note:: :class: sphx-glr-download-link-note Click :ref:`here ` to download the full example code .. rst-class:: sphx-glr-example-title .. _sphx_glr_gallery_ticks_and_spines_tick_labels_from_values.py: ========================================= Setting tick labels from a list of values ========================================= Using `.Axes.set_xticks` causes the tick labels to be set on the currently chosen ticks. However, you may want to allow matplotlib to dynamically choose the number of ticks and their spacing. In this case it may be better to determine the tick label from the value at the tick. The following example shows how to do this. NB: The `.ticker.MaxNLocator` is used here to ensure that the tick values take integer values. .. code-block:: default import matplotlib.pyplot as plt from matplotlib.ticker import MaxNLocator fig, ax = plt.subplots() xs = range(26) ys = range(26) labels = list('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz') def format_fn(tick_val, tick_pos): if int(tick_val) in xs: return labels[int(tick_val)] else: return '' # A FuncFormatter is created automatically. ax.xaxis.set_major_formatter(format_fn) ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(MaxNLocator(integer=True)) ax.plot(xs, ys) plt.show() .. image:: /gallery/ticks_and_spines/images/sphx_glr_tick_labels_from_values_001.png :alt: tick labels from values :class: sphx-glr-single-img ------------ References """""""""" The use of the following functions, methods, classes and modules is shown in this example: .. code-block:: default import matplotlib matplotlib.pyplot.subplots matplotlib.axis.Axis.set_major_formatter matplotlib.axis.Axis.set_major_locator matplotlib.ticker.FuncFormatter matplotlib.ticker.MaxNLocator .. _sphx_glr_download_gallery_ticks_and_spines_tick_labels_from_values.py: .. only :: html .. container:: sphx-glr-footer :class: sphx-glr-footer-example .. container:: sphx-glr-download sphx-glr-download-python :download:`Download Python source code: tick_labels_from_values.py ` .. container:: sphx-glr-download sphx-glr-download-jupyter :download:`Download Jupyter notebook: tick_labels_from_values.ipynb ` .. only:: html .. rst-class:: sphx-glr-signature Keywords: matplotlib code example, codex, python plot, pyplot `Gallery generated by Sphinx-Gallery `_