python - Matplotlib: Making a line graph's datetime x axis labels look like Excel -

i have simple pandas dataframe yearly values plotting line graph:

import matplotlib.pyplot plt import pandas pd  >>>df               b 2010-01-01  9.7 9.0 2011-01-01  8.8 14.2 2012-01-01  8.4 7.6 2013-01-01  9.6 8.4 2014-01-01  8.2 5.5 

the expected format x axis use no margins labels:

fig  = plt.figure(0) ax = fig.add_subplot(1, 1, 1) df.plot(ax = ax) 

but force values plot in middle of year range, done in excel:

i have tried setting x axis margins:

ax.margins(xmargin = 1) 

but can see no difference.

if want move dates, try adding line @ end:

ax.set_xlim(ax.get_xlim()[0] - 0.5, ax.get_xlim()[1] + 0.5)  

if need format dates either modify index or make changes in plotted ticks so: (presuming df.index datetime object)

ax.set_xticklabels(df.index.to_series().apply(lambda x: x.strftime('%d/%m/%y'))) 

this format dates excel example.

or change index want , call .plot():

df.index = df.index.to_series().apply(lambda x: x.strftime('%d/%m/%y')) print df.index.tolist()  ['01/01/2010', '01/01/2011', '01/01/2012', '01/01/2013', '01/01/2014'] 

and, if index not datetime need convert first this:

df.index = pd.to_datetime(df.index)