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API Overview

Below we describe several common approaches to plotting with Matplotlib.

Contents

The pyplot API

matplotlib.pyplot is a collection of command style functions that make Matplotlib work like MATLAB. Each pyplot function makes some change to a figure: e.g., creates a figure, creates a plotting area in a figure, plots some lines in a plotting area, decorates the plot with labels, etc.

.pyplot is mainly intended for interactive plots and simple cases of programmatic plot generation.

Further reading:

  • The matplotlib.pyplot function reference
  • :doc:`/tutorials/introductory/pyplot`
  • :ref:`Pyplot examples <pyplots_examples>`

The object-oriented API

At its core, Matplotlib is object-oriented. We recommend directly working with the objects, if you need more control and customization of your plots.

In many cases you will create a .Figure and one or more ~matplotlib.axes.Axes using .pyplot.subplots and from then on only work on these objects. However, it's also possible to create .Figures explicitly (e.g. when including them in GUI applications).

Further reading:

  • matplotlib.axes.Axes and matplotlib.figure.Figure for an overview of plotting functions.
  • Most of the :ref:`examples <examples-index>` use the object-oriented approach (except for the pyplot section)
  • The list of :doc:`matplotlib modules </api/index>`.

The pylab API (disapproved)

Warning

Since heavily importing into the global namespace may result in unexpected behavior, the use of pylab is strongly discouraged. Use matplotlib.pyplot instead.

matplotlib.pylab is a module that includes matplotlib.pyplot, numpy and some additional functions within a single namespace. Its original purpose was to mimic a MATLAB-like way of working by importing all functions into the global namespace. This is considered bad style nowadays.