How to plot events with minute precision on hourly plots using matplotlib? - python-3.x

Question

I have an hourly plot generated with matplotlib. I need to plot an event which goes for example, from 09:00 to 10:45. When I try to do it, using axvspan I obtain a bar from 9:00 to 10:00. How could I obtain the longer one?
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.gridspec import GridSpec
import datetime as dt
import pandas as pd
now_date = dt.datetime(2018,10,1,9)
d_tw_ini = now_date - dt.timedelta(hours = 1)
d_tw_fin = now_date + dt.timedelta(hours = 3)
dts = pd.date_range(start=d_tw_ini, end=d_tw_fin, freq='1H', name='ini', closed='left')
data=pd.DataFrame({'val':[0.5,0.4,0.7,0.9]})
ev1=[dt.datetime(2018,10,1,9,5),dt.datetime(2018,10,1,10,50)]
data['t']=dts.values
data.set_index('t',inplace=True)
fig = plt.figure()
gs = GridSpec(1, 1)
ax_1 = fig.add_subplot(gs[0, 0])
data.plot(ax=ax_1, y='val')
ax_1.axvspan(ev1[0],ev1[1], alpha=0.3, color= 'red')
Result

Answer 1

Juan, it looks when you used pandas to plot, the hourly indexing seems to cause issues with how axvspan gets plotted.
I replaced
data.plot(ax=ax_1, y='val')
with
ax_1.plot(data.index, data['val'])
which generates the image below, but unfortunately you lose the automated x-axis formatting.
Adding the two lines below will result in the same date formatting as your example.
ax_1.set_xticks([x for x in data.index])
ax_1.set_xticklabels([str(x)[11:16] for x in data.index])
Below is the full code to produce the above plot.
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.gridspec import GridSpec
import datetime as dt
import pandas as pd
now_date = dt.datetime(2018,10,1,9)
d_tw_ini = now_date - dt.timedelta(hours = 1)
d_tw_fin = now_date + dt.timedelta(hours = 3)
dts = pd.date_range(start=d_tw_ini, end=d_tw_fin, freq='1h', name='ini',
closed='left')
data=pd.DataFrame({'val':[0.5,0.4,0.7,0.9]})
ev1=[dt.datetime(2018,10,1,9,5,0),dt.datetime(2018,10,1,10,50,0)]
data['t']=dts.values
data.set_index('t',inplace=True)
fig = plt.figure()
gs = GridSpec(1, 1)
ax_1 = fig.add_subplot(gs[0, 0])
# modified section below
ax_1.plot(data.index, data['val'])
ax_1.axvspan(ev1[0],ev1[1], alpha=0.3, color= 'red')
ax_1.set_xticks([x for x in data.index])
ax_1.set_xticklabels([str(x)[11:16] for x in data.index])
plt.show()