Matplotlib API

Functional

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.

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

Further reading:

• The matplotlib.pyplot function reference.

• Pyplot tutorial.

• Pyplot examples.

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 Axes using pyplot.subplots and from then on only work on these objects. However, it’s also possible to create `Figure`s 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 examples use the object-oriented approach (except for the pyplot section)