How to nicely format the X-axis labels on a pandas bar chart

Question

Run the following code:

covid = pd.read_csv("https://covid.ourworldindata.org/data/owid-covid-data.csv")
covid.set_index("date", inplace=True)
covid.index = pd.to_datetime(covid.index)
covid[covid.location=="Denmark"].new_cases_smoothed_per_million.plot()

And you get nicely formatted X-axis labels:

Use the bar method, and you don't get nicely formatted X-axis labels:

covid[covid.location=="Denmark"].new_cases_smoothed_per_million.plot.bar()

How do I get nicely formatted X-axis labels on the bar chart?

Answer 1

You can try something like this:

covid = pd.read_csv("https://covid.ourworldindata.org/data/owid-covid-data.csv")
covid.set_index("date", inplace=True)
covid.index = pd.to_datetime(covid.index)
df = covid.loc[covid.location=="Denmark", 'new_cases_smoothed_per_million']
g =  df.groupby(pd.Grouper(freq='M')).sum()
ax = g.plot.bar(figsize=(15,6), rot=0)
def line_format(label):
    """
    Convert time label to the format of pandas line plot
    """
    month = label.month_name()[:3]
    if month == 'Jan':
        month += f'\n{label.year}'
    return month

ax.set_xticklabels(map(line_format, g.index), fontsize=8);

Output: