DZone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
Refcards Trend Reports Events Over 2 million developers have joined DZone. Join Today! Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile Manage Email Subscriptions Moderation Admin Console How to Post to DZone Article Submission Guidelines
View Profile
Sign Out
Refcards
Trend Reports
Events
Zones
Culture and Methodologies Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Culture and Methodologies
Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering
AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture
Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding
Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
  1. DZone
  2. Coding
  3. Languages
  4. Python 3: Create Sparklines Using matplotlib

Python 3: Create Sparklines Using matplotlib

I had the code to create sparklines inside a Pandas DataFrame, but I had to tweak it a bit to get it to play nicely with Python 3.6. Here's what I did.

Mark Needham user avatar by
Mark Needham
·
Oct. 06, 17 · Tutorial
Like (2)
Save
Tweet
Share
7.51K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

I recently wanted to create sparklines to show how some values were changing over time. In addition, I wanted to generate them as images on the server rather than introducing a JavaScript library.

Chris Seymour’s excellent gist, which shows how to create sparklines inside a Pandas DataFrame, got me most of the way there. But I had to tweak his code a bit to get it to play nicely with Python 3.6.

This is what I ended up with:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use("Agg")
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import base64
 
from io import BytesIO
 
def sparkline(data, figsize=(4, 0.25), **kwags):
    """
    Returns a HTML image tag containing a base64 encoded sparkline style plot
    """
    data = list(data)
 
    fig, ax = plt.subplots(1, 1, figsize=figsize, **kwags)
    ax.plot(data)
    for k,v in ax.spines.items():
        v.set_visible(False)
    ax.set_xticks([])
    ax.set_yticks([])
 
    plt.plot(len(data) - 1, data[len(data) - 1], 'r.')
 
    ax.fill_between(range(len(data)), data, len(data)*[min(data)], alpha=0.1)
 
    img = BytesIO()
    plt.savefig(img, transparent=True, bbox_inches='tight')
    img.seek(0)
    plt.close()
 
    return base64.b64encode(img.read()).decode("UTF-8")

I had to change the class used to write the image from StringIO to BytesIO, and I found I needed to decode the bytes produced if I wanted it to display in an HTML page.

This is how you would call the above function:

if __name__ == "__main__":
    values = [
        [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10],
        [7,10,12,18,2,8,10,6,7,12],
        [10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1]
    ]
 
    with open("/tmp/foo.html", "w") as file:
        for value in values:
            file.write('<div><img src="data:image/png;base64,{}"/></div>'.format(sparkline(value)))

And the HTML page looks like this:

2017 09 23 07 49 32

That was easy!

Python (language) Matplotlib

Published at DZone with permission of Mark Needham, DZone MVB. See the original article here.

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Popular on DZone

  • Iptables Basic Commands for Novice
  • OpenID Connect Flows
  • Distributed SQL: An Alternative to Database Sharding
  • Understanding gRPC Concepts, Use Cases, and Best Practices

Comments

Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 600 Park Offices Drive
  • Suite 300
  • Durham, NC 27709
  • support@dzone.com
  • +1 (919) 678-0300

Let's be friends: