How to show date and time on x axis

Question

I would like to assign for x axis in matplotlib plot full date with time but with autoscale I could get only times or dates but not both.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pandas as pd

times = pd.date_range('2015-10-06', periods=500, freq='10min')

fig, ax = plt.subplots(1)
fig.autofmt_xdate()
plt.plot(times, range(times.size))
plt.show()

And on x axis I get only times without any dates so it's hard to distinct measurements.

I think that it's some option in matplotlib in matplotlib.dates.AutoDateFormatter but I couldn't find any one that could allow me to change that autoscale.

Invalid

Answer 1

You can do this with a matplotlib.dates.DateFormatter, which takes a strftime format string as its argument. To get a day-month-year hour:minute format, you can use %d-%m-%y %H:%M:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.dates as mdates

times = pd.date_range('2015-10-06', periods=500, freq='10min')

fig, ax = plt.subplots(1)
fig.autofmt_xdate()
plt.plot(times, range(times.size))

xfmt = mdates.DateFormatter('%d-%m-%y %H:%M')
ax.xaxis.set_major_formatter(xfmt)

plt.show()

Bloodstream

If you define two y-axis for your plot, you may need to call xaxis.set_major_formatter(xfmt) on the other axis object. – Camphorate

how can we increase the number of dates (the frequency of showing the dates) on the x-axis? – Ectoblast

@Ectoblast you would want to change the Locator. For example, in this case we could use ax.xaxis.set_major_locator(mdates.HourLocator(interval=6)) to have a tick every 6 hours. See the docs here for a list of different available locators. – Bloodstream

Answer 2

plt.figure() 
plt.plot(...)
plt.gcf().autofmt_xdate() plt.show()

Thunderstone

Adding context to a code answer is considered useful. – Towline

Answer 3

This is how to plot date and time column when it is not your index column.
fig, ax = plt.subplots() ax.plot('docdate', 'count', data=newdf) fig.autofmt_xdate() plt.show()

Flavio

adding a verbal explanation is often helpful – Gallstone

This is just a very simplified version of accepted answer with no real addition. – Enlighten