Plotting matplotlib tables with a multi-index

Question

Is it possible to plot a table with a multi-index using matplotlib the same way pandas displays out the table? The most I found on web was this open git issue from 2012.

Given the following example data frame:

arrays = [['bar', 'bar', 'baz', 'baz', 'foo', 'foo', 'qux', 'qux'],
          ['one', 'two', 'one', 'two', 'one', 'two', 'one', 'two']]

tuples = list(zip(*arrays))
index = pd.MultiIndex.from_tuples(tuples, names=['first', 'second'])
df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(8, 4), index=arrays)

Which prints as follows:

However when I try to create a table out of this using the following example:

fig=plt.figure(figsize=(9.5, 11))
plt.gca().axis('off')
matplotlib_tab = pd.tools.plotting.table(plt.gca(),
                                         df, 
                                        loc='upper center', 
                                        colWidths=[0.25]*len(df.columns))    

table_props=matplotlib_tab.properties()
table_cells=table_props['child_artists']
for cell in table_cells:
    cell.set_height(0.024)
    cell.set_fontsize(12)

fig.text(4.25/8.5, 10.5/11., 'plot', ha='center', fontsize=12)
plt.plot()

I get the following ploted as a table(Note the left index isn't the same):

Answer 1

A bit of an incomplete answer Matplotlib.table.table that is called by pandas.tools.plotting.table iterates through the MultiIndex of the dataframe, that returns the tuples as shown in the table. I checked the source code of both functions and it seems that it is currently they don't suppport any form of multirow or multicolumn table.

If the table is a standalone one, why not use, for example, df.to_html() that supports multiindexes?

<table border="1" class="dataframe">
  <thead>
    <tr style="text-align: right;">
      <th></th>
      <th></th>
      <th>0</th>
      <th>1</th>
      <th>2</th>
      <th>3</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <th rowspan="2" valign="top">bar</th>
      <th>one</th>
      <td>0.578703</td>
      <td>1.499785</td>
      <td>-1.144682</td>
      <td>0.957464</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th>two</th>
      <td>1.116768</td>
      <td>0.291652</td>
      <td>-0.095254</td>
      <td>0.131653</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th rowspan="2" valign="top">baz</th>
      <th>one</th>
      <td>-1.119140</td>
      <td>0.245226</td>
      <td>0.453203</td>
      <td>-1.827160</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th>two</th>
      <td>0.442228</td>
      <td>0.160754</td>
      <td>1.199452</td>
      <td>0.767720</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th rowspan="2" valign="top">foo</th>
      <th>one</th>
      <td>0.621110</td>
      <td>0.334196</td>
      <td>1.854065</td>
      <td>0.505222</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th>two</th>
      <td>-0.269477</td>
      <td>1.294712</td>
      <td>0.421114</td>
      <td>0.018712</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th rowspan="2" valign="top">qux</th>
      <th>one</th>
      <td>-1.736962</td>
      <td>-2.627593</td>
      <td>-0.843875</td>
      <td>-2.108532</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <th>two</th>
      <td>-1.200400</td>
      <td>-0.319079</td>
      <td>0.529251</td>
      <td>-1.928900</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>