Question

Anyone know if it is possible to wrap the xtick labels in matplotlib? Right now I’ve got the following code (kind of messy — been hacking at it for a while):

def plotResults(request, question_id):
 responses = ResponseOption.objects.filter(question__id=question_id).order_by('order').annotate(response_num=Count('response'))

 counts = []
 labels = [] 

 for response in responses:
  counts.append(response.response_num)
  labels.append(smart_truncate('$'+response.text+'$'))

 N = len(labels)
 labels = tuple(labels)
 counts = tuple(counts)
 ind = na.array(range(N))+0.5
 width = .35
 fig = Figure(facecolor='white',edgecolor='white')
 ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1)


 rects1 = ax.bar(ind, counts,linewidth=0)

 ax.set_ylabel('$Count$')

 ax.set_title('$Response Historgram$')
 ax.set_xticks(ind+width)
 ax.set_xticklabels(labels)

 print mpl.matplotlib_fname()

 canvas = FigureCanvas(fig)
 response = HttpResponse(content_type='image/png')

 canvas.print_png(response)

 return response

That generates this plot:

As you can see the xticks are boned. Any ideas on how to wrap them, or baring that make them readable? Thanks again!

PS: This is part of a Django project. I return the plot as a png image — normally call them from img tags in various views.

Answer 1

Perhaps try:

ax.set_xticklabels(labels, rotation=45)

Thanks to Amro for pointing out that rotation can be any degree.