Format x-axis on chart created with pandas plot method

Question

pandas.DataFrame.plot is a convenient method for plotting data from dataframes. However, I don't understand how to format the axes using this method. For example,

import pandas as pd
import datetime

df = pd.DataFrame(index =  [datetime.datetime(2016, 7, 2, 0, 0),
                    datetime.datetime(2016, 8, 6, 0, 0),
                    datetime.datetime(2016, 9, 13, 0, 0),
                    datetime.datetime(2016, 10, 26, 0, 0),
                    datetime.datetime(2016, 11, 2, 0, 0)],
                    data = {'total' : [5, 3, 1, 0, 2]})

df

Output

          total
2016-07-02  5
2016-08-06  3
2016-09-13  1
2016-10-26  0
2016-11-02  2

Now plotting with the pandas plot method:

df.plot(kind='bar')

I would prefer that the x-axis just have the labels as the three-letter format of month - Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov.

Is this possible with the pandas plot method or should I build a chart with matplotlib instead?

Answer 1

I found a simpler way to change the x labels to month only.

import pandas as pd
import datetime

df = pd.DataFrame(index =  [datetime.datetime(2016, 7, 2, 0, 0),
                    datetime.datetime(2016, 8, 6, 0, 0),
                    datetime.datetime(2016, 9, 13, 0, 0),
                    datetime.datetime(2016, 10, 26, 0, 0),
                    datetime.datetime(2016, 11, 2, 0, 0)],
                    data = {'total' : [5, 3, 1, 0, 2]})

ax = df.plot(kind='bar')
x_labels = df.index.strftime('%b')
ax.set_xticklabels(x_labels)

plt.show()