Stop matplotlib repeating labels in legend

Question

Here is a very simplified example:

xvalues = [2,3,4,6]

for x in xvalues:
    plt.axvline(x,color='b',label='xvalues')

plt.legend()

The legend will now show 'xvalues' as a blue line 4 times in the legend. Is there a more elegant way of fixing this than the following?

for i,x in enumerate(xvalues):
    if not i:
        plt.axvline(x,color='b',label='xvalues')
    else:
        plt.axvline(x,color='b')

Answer 1

legend takes as arguments a list of axis handles and labels, defaulting to plt.gca().get_legend_handles_labels(). You can remove duplicate labels when calling legend, for example:

from collections import OrderedDict
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

handles, labels = plt.gca().get_legend_handles_labels()
by_label = OrderedDict(zip(labels, handles))
plt.legend(by_label.values(), by_label.keys())

Answer 2

handles, labels = ax.get_legend_handles_labels()
handle_list, label_list = [], []
for handle, label in zip(handles, labels):
    if label not in label_list:
        handle_list.append(handle)
        label_list.append(label)
plt.legend(handle_list, label_list)

Answer 3

These code snippets didn't work for me personally. I was plotting two different groups in two different colors. The legend would show two red markers and two blue markers, when I only wanted to see one per color. I'll paste a simplified version of what did work for me:

Import statements

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

from matplotlib.legend_handler import HandlerLine2D

Plot data

points_grp, = plt.plot(x[grp_idx], y[grp_idx], color=c.c[1], marker=m, ms=4, lw=0, label=leglab[1])        
points_ctrl, = plt.plot(x[ctrl_idx], y[ctrl_idx], color=c.c[0], marker=m, ms=4, lw=0, label=leglab[0])

Add legend

points_dict = {points_grp: HandlerLine2D(numpoints=1),points_ctrl: HandlerLine2D(numpoints=1)}
leg = ax.legend(fontsize=12, loc='upper left', bbox_to_anchor=(1, 1.03),handler_map=points_dict)

Answer 4

I don't know if this can be considered "elegant", but you can have your label a variable that gets set to "_nolegend_" after first usage:

my_label = "xvalues"
xvalues = [2,3,4,6]

for x in xvalues:
    plt.axvline(x, color='b', label=my_label)
    my_label = "_nolegend_"

plt.legend()

This can be generalized using a dictionary of labels if you have to put several labels:

my_labels = {"x1" : "x1values", "x2" : "x2values"}
x1values = [1, 3, 5]
x2values = [2, 4, 6]

for x in x1values:
    plt.axvline(x, color='b', label=my_labels["x1"])
    my_labels["x1"] = "_nolegend_"
for x in x2values:
    plt.axvline(x, color='r', label=my_labels["x2"])
    my_labels["x2"] = "_nolegend_"

plt.legend()

(Answer inspired by https://stackoverflow.com/a/19386045/1878788)

Answer 5

Based on answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/13589144/9132798 and https://stackoverflow.com/a/19386045/9132798 plt.gca().get_legend_handles_labels()[1] gives a list of names, it is possible to check if the label is already in the list while in the loop plotting (label= name[i] if name[i] not in plt.gca().get_legend_handles_labels()[1] else ''). For the given example this solution would look like:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

xvalues = [2,3,4,6]

for x in xvalues:
    plt.axvline(x,color='b',\
    label= 'xvalues' if 'xvalues' \
            not in plt.gca().get_legend_handles_labels()[1] else '')

plt.legend()

Which is much shorter than https://stackoverflow.com/a/13589144/9132798 and more flexible than https://stackoverflow.com/a/19386045/9132798 as it could be use for any kind of loop any plot function in the loop individually. However, for many cycles it probably slower than https://stackoverflow.com/a/13589144/9132798.