[FIXED] Is there a way to set the plotting global properties specifically for just one figure in matplotlib?

Issue

I do realize this has already been addressed here (e.g.,.how to set local rcParams or rcParams for one figure in matplotlib) Nevertheless, I hope this question was different.

I have a plotting function in python with matplotlib that includes global properties, so all new plots will have updated with the global properties.

def catscatter(data,colx,coly,cols,color=['grey','black'],ratio=10,font='Helvetica',save=False,save_name='Default'):
    '''
    This function creates a scatter plot for categorical variables. It's useful to compare two lists with elements in common.
    '''

    df = data.copy()
    # Create a dict to encode the categeories into numbers (sorted)
    colx_codes=dict(zip(df[colx].sort_values().unique(),range(len(df[colx].unique()))))
    coly_codes=dict(zip(df[coly].sort_values(ascending=False).unique(),range(len(df[coly].unique()))))
    
    # Apply the encoding
    df[colx]=df[colx].apply(lambda x: colx_codes[x])
    df[coly]=df[coly].apply(lambda x: coly_codes[x])
    
    
    # Prepare the aspect of the plot
    plt.rcParams['xtick.bottom'] = plt.rcParams['xtick.labelbottom'] = False
    plt.rcParams['xtick.top'] = plt.rcParams['xtick.labeltop'] = True
    plt.rcParams['font.sans-serif']=font
    
    plt.rcParams['xtick.color']=color[-1]
    plt.rcParams['ytick.color']=color[-1]
    plt.box(False)

    
    # Plot all the lines for the background
    for num in range(len(coly_codes)):
        plt.hlines(num,-1,len(colx_codes),linestyle='dashed',linewidth=2,color=color[num%2],alpha=0.5)
    for num in range(len(colx_codes)):
        plt.vlines(num,-1,len(coly_codes),linestyle='dashed',linewidth=2,color=color[num%2],alpha=0.5)
        
    # Plot the scatter plot with the numbers
    plt.scatter(df[colx],
               df[coly],
               s=df[cols]*ratio,
               zorder=2,
               color=color[-1])
    
    # Change the ticks numbers to categories and limit them
    plt.xticks(ticks=list(colx_codes.values()),labels=colx_codes.keys(),rotation=90)
    plt.yticks(ticks=list(coly_codes.values()),labels=coly_codes.keys())


    # Save if wanted
    if save:
        plt.savefig(save_name+'.png')

Below are the properties that I'm using inside the function,

plt.rcParams['xtick.bottom'] = plt.rcParams['xtick.labelbottom'] = False
plt.rcParams['xtick.top'] = plt.rcParams['xtick.labeltop'] = True

I want these properties to apply only when I call the catscatter function.

Is there a way to set the plotting global properties specifically for just one figure, without impacting other plots in jupyter notebook?

Or is there at least a good way to change the properties for one plotting function and then change them back to the values that were used before (not necessarily the rcdefaults?

Solution

To only change the properties of one figure, you can just use the relevant method on the Figure or Axes instance rather than using the rcParams.

In this case, it looks like you want to set the x-axis label and ticks to appear on the top of the plot rather than the bottom. You can use the following to achieve exactly that.

ax.xaxis.set_label_position('top')
ax.xaxis.set_ticks_position('top')

Consider the following minimal example:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig, ax = plt.subplots()

ax.set_xlabel('label')

ax.xaxis.set_label_position('top')
ax.xaxis.set_ticks_position('top')

Answered By - tmdavison