mplstyle

A simple API for setting matplotlib styles, as well as a repository of nice styles.

Click here for a basic demo.

Usage

mplstyle lets you set multiple matplotlib styles with a single dictionary object, rather than the more cumbersome native methods. So instead of:

matplotlib.rcParams["lines.linewidth"] = 2
matplotlib.rcParams["lines.color"] = "r"
matplotlib.rcParams["grid.color"] = "#CCCCCC"
matplotlib.rcParams["grid.linewidth"] = 0.5

...or the equivalent:

matplotlib.rc("lines", linewidth=2, color="r")
matplotlib.rc("grid", color="#CCCCCC", linewidth=0.5)

...you can do:

import mplstyle
mplstyle.set({
	"lines": { "linewidth": 2, "color": "r" },
	"grid": { "color": "#CCCCCC", "linewidth": 0.5 }
})

You can find a full list of matplotlib style parameters here.

mplstyle.set(obj, *args, **kwargs)

As noted in the usage examples above, you can set matplotlib styles by passing a dictionary of values to mplstyle.set. The keys can be nested:

mplstyle.set({
    "lines": { "linewidth": 2 }
})

... or use dot notation:

mplstyle.set({ "lines.linewidth": 2 })

Instead of passing a dictionary as the first argument, you can also pass a module containing a function named style. See the "simple" style module for an example. The module's style function can accept any number of positional and/or keyword arguments, which you can pass as additional arguments to set. So you can set the simple style like this:

from mplstyle.styles import simple as simple_style
mplstyle.set(simple_style)

... or like so, if you'd like to override the default n_colors keyword argument:

from mplstyle.styles import pastel
mplstyle.set(pastel, n_colors=2)

Currently, mplstyle only comes with the "simple" style, but it's trivial to create your own. Feel free to submit pull requests with style modules you think work particularly well.

mplstyle.reset(params=DEFAULT_PARAMS)

You can reset matplotlib's styles to their default values by calling mplstyle.reset(), or you can pass a dictionary of alternate defaults. The difference between mplstyle.set() and mplstyle.reset() is that set only adds style definitions, while reset removes all style definitions that you do not explicitly define.

mplstyle.get(key=False)

Called without parameters, mplstyle.get() returns the current style definitions. Called with a string as its (only) parameter, mplstyle.get("keystring") returns the value corresponding to that key.

Creating Style Modules

See the "simple" style module for an example of a style module. The only requirement of style modules is that they contain a top-level style function and that they return a dictionary of matplotlib style definitions. A bare-bones example:

def style():
    return { "lines": { "marker": "x" }}

License

mplstyle is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.txt for more details.

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request