graph - Plotting time in Python with Matplotlib

Question

I have an array of timestamps in the format (HH:MM:SS.mmmmmm) and another array of floating point numbers, each corresponding to a value in the timestamp array.

Can I plot time on the x axis and the numbers on the y-axis using Matplotlib?

I was trying to, but somehow it was only accepting arrays of floats. How can I get it to plot the time? Do I have to modify the format in any way?

Answer 1

You must first convert your timestamps to Python datetime objects (use datetime.strptime). Then use date2num to convert the dates to matplotlib format.

Plot the dates and values using plot_date:

dates = matplotlib.dates.date2num(list_of_datetimes)
matplotlib.pyplot.plot_date(dates, values)