[FIXED] How to enable/disable easily shared axis using matplotlib

Issue

The previous answer from tcaswell on how to create shared axis for plots which are not on the same figure was perfect :) But I'm now wondering how to disable the shared axis and reenable them without having to redraw or destroy anything ? (I have multiple graphs and I want to add a button that the user can click to disable/enable those shared axes) I found a way :

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig = plt.figure()
ax1 = fig.add_subplot(111)
fig2 = plt.figure()
ax2 = fig2.add_subplot(111, sharex=ax1)

to create the shared axis and then

fig2.delaxes(ax2)
ax2 = fig2.add_subplot(111)

but this require to redraw everything and can take some times. I didnt find a simple function to disable the link. Is there a lighter way than what I did ?

Thanks !

Solution

There is no existing easy way to do this, however I think it can be done (it will just take a bit of digging into the matplotlib internals). The way that the axes are linked underneath is by simply using the same locator and formatter objects for both axis. To link/unlink you will have to copy/make new all of those objects, as well as update some ancillary structures (_shared_x_axes, _shared_y_axes). Look at the implementation of matplotlib.axes.Axes.cla() for some idea of what you need to do.

There is a pull request against the repo that adds this functionality and the associated feature request. If you are comfortable a) installing from source b) using master and c) applying this patch I think the developers would appreciate you testing this.

Answered By - tacaswell