python - Add margin when plots run against the edge of the graph

Question

Often when I plot in matplotlib, I get graphs like this:

You can't see the function because it runs against the edge of the plot.

Is there any way to automatically add some margin in these cases, so that they look like this:

Answer 1

You can use ax.margins() to set the margins. Example:

In [1]: fig, ax = plt.subplots()

In [2]: ax.plot(np.arange(10), '-o')
Out[2]: [<matplotlib.lines.Line2D at 0x302fb50>]

In [1]: fig, ax = plt.subplots()

In [2]: ax.margins(0.05)

In [3]: ax.plot(np.arange(10), '-o')
Out[3]: [<matplotlib.lines.Line2D at 0x302fb50>]

You can also set only the x- or the y-margin. However it doesn't seem to be a matplotlibrc option so that you can simply make this the default behaviour (so it isn't fully automatically). I opened a github issue to request this.