[python] How to update a plot in matplotlib?

I'm having issues with redrawing the figure here. I allow the user to specify the units in the time scale (x-axis) and then I recalculate and call this function plots(). I want the plot to simply update, not append another plot to the figure.

def plots():
    global vlgaBuffSorted
    cntr()

    result = collections.defaultdict(list)
    for d in vlgaBuffSorted:
        result[d['event']].append(d)

    result_list = result.values()

    f = Figure()
    graph1 = f.add_subplot(211)
    graph2 = f.add_subplot(212,sharex=graph1)

    for item in result_list:
        tL = []
        vgsL = []
        vdsL = []
        isubL = []
        for dict in item:
            tL.append(dict['time'])
            vgsL.append(dict['vgs'])
            vdsL.append(dict['vds'])
            isubL.append(dict['isub'])
        graph1.plot(tL,vdsL,'bo',label='a')
        graph1.plot(tL,vgsL,'rp',label='b')
        graph2.plot(tL,isubL,'b-',label='c')

    plotCanvas = FigureCanvasTkAgg(f, pltFrame)
    toolbar = NavigationToolbar2TkAgg(plotCanvas, pltFrame)
    toolbar.pack(side=BOTTOM)
    plotCanvas.get_tk_widget().pack(side=TOP)

This worked for me. Repeatedly calls a function updating the graph every time.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.animation as anim

def plot_cont(fun, xmax):
    y = []
    fig = plt.figure()
    ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1)

    def update(i):
        yi = fun()
        y.append(yi)
        x = range(len(y))
        ax.clear()
        ax.plot(x, y)
        print i, ': ', yi

    a = anim.FuncAnimation(fig, update, frames=xmax, repeat=False)
    plt.show()

"fun" is a function that returns an integer. FuncAnimation will repeatedly call "update", it will do that "xmax" times.

In case anyone comes across this article looking for what I was looking for, I found examples at

How to visualize scalar 2D data with Matplotlib?

and

http://mri.brechmos.org/2009/07/automatically-update-a-figure-in-a-loop (on web.archive.org)

then modified them to use imshow with an input stack of frames, instead of generating and using contours on the fly.

Starting with a 3D array of images of shape (nBins, nBins, nBins), called frames.

def animate_frames(frames):
    nBins   = frames.shape[0]
    frame   = frames[0]
    tempCS1 = plt.imshow(frame, cmap=plt.cm.gray)
    for k in range(nBins):
        frame   = frames[k]
        tempCS1 = plt.imshow(frame, cmap=plt.cm.gray)
        del tempCS1
        fig.canvas.draw()
        #time.sleep(1e-2) #unnecessary, but useful
        fig.clf()

fig = plt.figure()
ax  = fig.add_subplot(111)

win = fig.canvas.manager.window
fig.canvas.manager.window.after(100, animate_frames, frames)

I also found a much simpler way to go about this whole process, albeit less robust:

fig = plt.figure()

for k in range(nBins):
    plt.clf()
    plt.imshow(frames[k],cmap=plt.cm.gray)
    fig.canvas.draw()
    time.sleep(1e-6) #unnecessary, but useful

Note that both of these only seem to work with ipython --pylab=tk, a.k.a.backend = TkAgg

Thank you for the help with everything.

I have released a package called python-drawnow that provides functionality to let a figure update, typically called within a for loop, similar to Matlab's drawnow.

An example usage:

from pylab import figure, plot, ion, linspace, arange, sin, pi
def draw_fig():
    # can be arbitrarily complex; just to draw a figure
    #figure() # don't call!
    plot(t, x)
    #show() # don't call!

N = 1e3
figure() # call here instead!
ion()    # enable interactivity
t = linspace(0, 2*pi, num=N)
for i in arange(100):
    x = sin(2 * pi * i**2 * t / 100.0)
    drawnow(draw_fig)

This package works with any matplotlib figure and provides options to wait after each figure update or drop into the debugger.

You can also do like the following: This will draw a 10x1 random matrix data on the plot for 50 cycles of the for loop.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

plt.ion()
for i in range(50):
    y = np.random.random([10,1])
    plt.plot(y)
    plt.draw()
    plt.pause(0.0001)
    plt.clf()

This worked for me:

from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
from IPython.display import clear_output
import numpy as np
for i in range(50):
    clear_output(wait=True)
    y = np.random.random([10,1])
    plt.plot(y)
    plt.show()

All of the above might be true, however for me "online-updating" of figures only works with some backends, specifically wx. You just might try to change to this, e.g. by starting ipython/pylab by ipython --pylab=wx! Good luck!