Question

I’m trying to go away from matlab and use python + matplotlib instead. However, I haven’t really figured out what the matplotlib equivalent of matlab ‘handles’ is. So here’s some matlab code where I return the handles so that I can change certain properties. What is the exact equivalent of this code using matplotlib? I very often use the ‘Tag’ property of handles in matlab and use ‘findobj’ with it. Can this be done with matplotlib as well?

% create figure and return figure handle
h = figure();
% add a plot and tag it so we can find the handle later
plot(1:10, 1:10, 'Tag', 'dummy')
% add a legend
my_legend = legend('a line')
% change figure name
set(h, 'name', 'myfigure')
% find current axes
my_axis = gca();
% change xlimits
set(my_axis, 'XLim', [0 5])
% find the plot object generated above and modify YData
set(findobj('Tag', 'dummy'), 'YData', repmat(10, 1, 10))

Answer 1

There is a findobj method is matplotlib too:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

h = plt.figure()
plt.plot(range(1,11), range(1,11), gid='dummy')
my_legend = plt.legend(['a line'])
plt.title('myfigure')  # not sure if this is the same as set(h, 'name', 'myfigure')
my_axis = plt.gca()
my_axis.set_xlim(0,5)
for p in set(h.findobj(lambda x: x.get_gid()=='dummy')):
    p.set_ydata(np.ones(10)*10.0)
plt.show()

Note that the gid parameter in plt.plot is usually used by matplotlib (only) when the backend is set to ‘svg’. It use the gid as the id attribute to some grouping elements (like line2d, patch, text).