python matplotlib save graph without showing

Question

I would like to create a histogram and save it to a file without showing it on the screen. The piece of code I have now is showing the figure by default and I cannot find any way to suppress showing the figure. I have tried pyplot.hist(nrs) as well, with the same problem.

import math, time, matplotlib.pyplot as plt, pylab; 
import numpy as np; 

nrs = [1.0, 2.0, 1.0, 3.0, 4.0]
freq,bins = np.histogram(nrs)
fig = plt.figure(figsize=(5,4), dpi=100); 
freq = np.append(freq, [0.0])
graph = fig.add_subplot(111);
x = graph.bar(bins, freq)

fig.savefig( "test.png")

I can't reproduce this behaviour(matplotlib 1.3.1). What version are you using? — igavriil
– igavriil, Commented Mar 18, 2015 at 15:01
are you sure you don't have plt.show() or fig.show() anywhere in your code? — Srivatsan
– Srivatsan, Commented Mar 18, 2015 at 15:08
Just save this as a .py script and run it with python script.py. This should work. The only way you could be getting a figure without calling plt.show() is with interactive mode in IPython. — rth
– rth, Commented Mar 18, 2015 at 15:14
You want to use one of the headless backends (ex Agg). See stackoverflow.com/questions/2801882/… for an example (slightly different issue there, but same solution). — tacaswell
– tacaswell, Commented Mar 18, 2015 at 16:29
You might be using an interactive client (IPython). plt.ioff() would turn autoploting off. — Imanol Luengo
– Imanol Luengo, Commented Mar 18, 2015 at 20:02

Monique Hendriks · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-23 07:42:45Z

7

Thank you tcasewell, adding

import matplotlib
# Force matplotlib to not use any Xwindows backend.
matplotlib.use('Agg')

Before importing pyplot solved the problem.

answered Mar 23, 2015 at 7:42

Monique Hendriks

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