How Do I Plot Timestamps on the x-axis in Matplotlib?

Plotting Timestamps on the x-Axis in Matplotlib

When plotting data with dates or timestamps on the x-axis, it's important to convert the timestamps to a format that Matplotlib can understand.

In the provided example, the timestamps are in the format (HH:MM:SS.mmmmmm). To plot these timestamps on the x-axis, you need to first convert them to Python datetime objects using the datetime.strptime function.

import datetime

timestamp = '12:00:00.123456'
datetime_object = datetime.strptime(timestamp, '%H:%M:%S.%f')

Once the timestamps are in datetime objects, you can convert them to Matplotlib's date format using the date2num function from the matplotlib.dates module.

import matplotlib.dates

dates = matplotlib.dates.date2num(x_values)

Finally, you can use plot_date to plot the dates and corresponding values.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.plot_date(dates, y_values)
plt.show()

This will generate a plot with the dates on the x-axis and the corresponding values on the y-axis.

Note: In Matplotlib version 3.5 and later, plot_date is discouraged. Instead, you should plot datetime data directly using plot and set the x-axis to date format using ax.xaxis.axis_date.

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