Python/Matplotlib dates are too close to each one

March 6, 2022

I have simple graph showing bitcoin price in some time as you can see on image.

Problem is that on x axis there are dates too close to each other. Thing is that I dont need to show every one date. Can I somehow limit them to lets say 6 labels instead of 25 as you can see on image right now. Or is there any better way how to handle dates?

My code:

def plot_data_out(x: array, y: array):
    x = np.array(x,dtype=datetime)
    y = np.array(y,dtype=float)
    print(x)
    print(y)
    plt.plot(x, y)
    plt.show()

x data:

['2022-03-04 01:00:00' '2022-03-04 02:00:00' '2022-03-04 03:00:00'
 '2022-03-04 04:00:00' '2022-03-04 05:00:00' '2022-03-04 06:00:00'
 '2022-03-04 07:00:00' '2022-03-04 08:00:00' '2022-03-04 09:00:00'
 '2022-03-04 10:00:00' '2022-03-04 11:00:00' '2022-03-04 12:00:00'
 '2022-03-04 13:00:00' '2022-03-04 14:00:00' '2022-03-04 15:00:00'
 '2022-03-04 16:00:00' '2022-03-04 17:00:00' '2022-03-04 18:00:00'
 '2022-03-04 19:00:00' '2022-03-04 20:00:00' '2022-03-04 21:00:00'
 '2022-03-04 22:00:00' '2022-03-04 23:00:00' '2022-03-05 00:00:00'
 '2022-03-05 01:00:00']

y data

[42454.   41603.36 41510.58 41403.7  41449.93 41379.99 41374.45 41407.98
 41436.98 41590.   41522.29 41676.56 41662.06 41511.3  41315.75 41106.91
 40694.32 40754.41 40840.53 40605.88 39782.13 39469.36 39392.83 39004.73
 39148.65]

>Solution :

You can convert the x axis data to datetime format and then use it to plot the graph. Even then you can see the labels look congested. You can rotate the labels by 30 degrees and have more legible chart

v = ['2022-03-04 01:00:00','2022-03-04 02:00:00','2022-03-04 03:00:00',
 '2022-03-04 04:00:00','2022-03-04 05:00:00','2022-03-04 06:00:00',
 '2022-03-04 07:00:00','2022-03-04 08:00:00','2022-03-04 09:00:00',
 '2022-03-04 10:00:00','2022-03-04 11:00:00','2022-03-04 12:00:00',
 '2022-03-04 13:00:00','2022-03-04 14:00:00','2022-03-04 15:00:00',
 '2022-03-04 16:00:00','2022-03-04 17:00:00','2022-03-04 18:00:00',
 '2022-03-04 19:00:00','2022-03-04 20:00:00','2022-03-04 21:00:00',
 '2022-03-04 22:00:00','2022-03-04 23:00:00','2022-03-05 00:00:00',
 '2022-03-05 01:00:00']

y = [42454.,41603.36,41510.58,41403.7 ,41449.93,41379.99,41374.45,41407.98,
 41436.98, 41590. ,  41522.29, 41676.56 ,41662.06, 41511.3  ,41315.75, 41106.91,
 40694.32, 40754.41 ,40840.53, 40605.88, 39782.13 ,39469.36 ,39392.83 ,39004.73,
 39148.65]

v1 = [datetime.datetime.strptime(x, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S") for x in v]

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.plot(v1,y)
plt.xticks(rotation = 30)