Using matplotlib in pygame

Question

I have a big question here - one that I imagine the majority of people will not like and I will probably be flamed for being a noob but here goes anyway.

I am trying to use matplotlib to implement a barchart into my pygame program. I managed to do it pretty simply but not using pygame.

I have managed to make a bar chart but I am not able to put it into pygame:

names = ['a', 'b', 'c']
values = [1, 10, 100]
plt.figure(1, figsize=(9, 3))
plt.bar(names, values)
plt.show()

I want to implement this to my game in pygame but I honestly have no idea where to start. It is for a project due next week. Thanks.

Answer 1

matplotlib as default uses tkinter to display graph. It can also use PyQt or wxPython - they are called "backends" - but it doesn't have methods to use PyGame as backend.

The only what I found (using Google) is example in PyGame wiki

It renders matplotlib graph to bitmap and then converts this bitmap to string which can be used to create Surface with image.

import matplotlib
matplotlib.use("Agg")

import matplotlib.backends.backend_agg as agg


import pylab

fig = pylab.figure(figsize=[4, 4], # Inches
                   dpi=100,        # 100 dots per inch, so the resulting buffer is 400x400 pixels
                   )
ax = fig.gca()
ax.plot([1, 2, 4])

canvas = agg.FigureCanvasAgg(fig)
canvas.draw()
renderer = canvas.get_renderer()
raw_data = renderer.tostring_rgb()

import pygame
from pygame.locals import *

pygame.init()

window = pygame.display.set_mode((600, 400), DOUBLEBUF)
screen = pygame.display.get_surface()

size = canvas.get_width_height()

surf = pygame.image.fromstring(raw_data, size, "RGB")
screen.blit(surf, (0,0))
pygame.display.flip()

crashed = False
while not crashed:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            crashed = True

Fankly I wouldn't use matplotlib to create graph - escpecially it is not interactive. It could be easy to create own graph in PyGame.

Answer 2

You might want to take a look to this library that attempts to create a proper pygame backend for matplotlib. https://pypi.org/project/pygame-matplotlib/

It is under beta developpement for the moment, but looks promising.