Add figure decorator.

[jfear]

• lcdblib version: NA
• Python version: NA
• Operating System: NA

Description

I have been thinking about streamlining my plotting workflow. I am proposing a decorator to plot functions allow outputting different contexts and formats.

What I Did

My current decorator:

from functools import wraps

def make_figs(fname=None, styles=None, formats=None):
    def _plot_all(func, styles=styles, formats=formats):
        @wraps(func)
        def wrapper(*args, styles=styles, formats=formats, **kwargs):
            def plot_style(style, formats):
                if isinstance(formats, str):
                    formats = [formats]
                elif formats is None:
                    formats = ['png', 'eps']
                
                with plt.style.context('seaborn-' + style):
                    fn = fname + '_' + style
                    func(*args,  **kwargs)
                    plt.tight_layout()
                    if style != 'notebook':
                        for f in formats:
                            plt.savefig('{}.{}'.format(fn, f))
                        plt.close()
                        
            if isinstance(styles, str):
                styles = [styles]
            elif styles is None:
                styles = ['notebook', 'talk', 'poster', 'paper']
                
            for style in styles:
                plot_style(style, formats)

        return wrapper
    return _plot_all

To use you can call it like so:

@make_figs(fname='test_plot', styles=['notebook', 'poster', 'paper'], formats=['png', 'svg'])
def plot(df):
    fig, ax = plt.subplots(1, 1)
    df.plot('X', 'Y', kind='scatter', ax=ax)
    ax.set_title('test')
    return fig

This would then output:

• test_plot_poster.png
• test_plot_poster.svg
• test_plot_paper.png
• test_plot_paper.svg

The notebook style is displayed.

@daler you probably already have something that does this kind of thing. Just seeing if it is generally useful and should be be added to lcdblib. Or if I should just keep it in my personal library.

[daler]

Oooo that looks really nice. I generally have separate code blocks for different styles (or separate modules entirely just for manuscript figures). But I'd start using this instead.

[jfear]

I would be curious how you do figures, it would be nice to have some clean solution.

[daler]

I generally have big blocks of custom code depending on the figure -- not sure there's a general solution there. When saving PNG or PDF, I currently just duplicate the savefig() line, adjusting extension as needed. But this decorator just adds functionality to whatever custom function you have, so I think it's a pretty clean solution.

[jfear]

Cool, I am going to play with it for one of my projects. If it works out I will go ahead and add to lcdblib.