Getting PySide to work with matplotlib

Question

I have tried running the example code on the SciPy website, but I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File \".\\matplotlibPySide.py\", line          


        

Answer 1

I had similar goals (LGPL, potential commercial use) and here's how I ended up getting it to work.

Create a matplotlib widget (see here for a more detailed one for PyQt):

import matplotlib

matplotlib.use('Qt4Agg')
matplotlib.rcParams['backend.qt4']='PySide'

from matplotlib.figure import Figure
from matplotlib.backends.backend_qt4agg import FigureCanvasQTAgg as FigureCanvas

class MatplotlibWidget(FigureCanvas):

    def __init__(self, parent=None,xlabel='x',ylabel='y',title='Title'):
        super(MatplotlibWidget, self).__init__(Figure())

        self.setParent(parent)
        self.figure = Figure()
        self.canvas = FigureCanvas(self.figure)
        self.axes = self.figure.add_subplot(111)

        self.axes.set_xlabel(xlabel)
        self.axes.set_ylabel(ylabel)
        self.axes.set_title(title)

In Qt Designer I created a blank widget to hold my plot and then when I __init__ the main window I call setupPlot:

def  setupPlot(self):
    # create a matplotlib widget
    self.DataPlot = MatplotlibWidget()
    # create a layout inside the blank widget and add the matplotlib widget        
    layout = QtGui.QVBoxLayout(self.ui.widget_PlotArea)        
    layout.addWidget(self.DataPlot,1)

Then I call plotDataPoints as needed:

def plotDataPoints(self,x,y):        
    self.DataPlot.axes.clear()
    self.DataPlot.axes.plot(x,y,'bo-')
    self.DataPlot.draw()

Note: this clears and redraws the entire plot every time (since the shape of my data keeps changing) and so isn't fast.