matplotlib bar chart with dates

Question

I know about plot_date() but is there a bar_date() out there?

The general method would be to use set_xticks and set_xticklabels, but I'd like something that can handle time scales from a few hours out to a few years (this means involving the major and minor ticks to make things readable I think).

Edit: I realized that I am plotting values associated with a specific time interval (that the bar spans). I updated below with the basic solution I used:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt   import datetime   t=[datetime.datetime(2010, 12, 2, 22, 0),datetime.datetime(2010, 12, 2, 23, 0),         datetime.datetime(2010, 12, 10, 0, 0),datetime.datetime(2010, 12, 10, 6, 0)]   y=[4,6,9,3]   interval=1.0/24.0  #1hr intervals, but maplotlib dates have base of 1 day   ax = plt.subplot(111)   ax.bar(t, y, width=interval)   ax.xaxis_date()    plt.show() 

Answer 1

All plot_date does is plot the function and the call ax.xaxis_date().

All you should need to do is this:

import numpy as np import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import datetime  x = [datetime.datetime(2010, 12, 1, 10, 0),     datetime.datetime(2011, 1, 4, 9, 0),     datetime.datetime(2011, 5, 5, 9, 0)] y = [4, 9, 2]  ax = plt.subplot(111) ax.bar(x, y, width=10) ax.xaxis_date()  plt.show()