PySimpleGUI – Drawing Line Graphs Using Matplotlib

If you want to create line graphs in your PySimpleGUI application, you can easily do so using Matplotlib. Matplotlib is a powerful plotting library that allows you to create a wide variety of plots, including line graphs, bar charts, scatter plots, and more. In this tutorial, we will walk you through the process of creating a line graph in PySimpleGUI using Matplotlib.

Step 1: Install Matplotlib

Before you can create line graphs in PySimpleGUI, you will need to install Matplotlib. You can do this using pip by running the following command in your terminal:

pip install matplotlib

Step 2: Import the necessary modules

Once you have installed Matplotlib, you can begin by importing the necessary modules in your Python script. You will need to import Matplotlib’s pyplot module, as well as PySimpleGUI’s Pyplot class. You can do this with the following code:

import PySimpleGUI as sg
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

Step 3: Create a PySimpleGUI window

Next, you will need to create a PySimpleGUI window in which to display your line graph. You can do this by creating a layout for your window that includes a Matplotlib canvas element. Here is an example layout that you can use:

layout = [
    [sg.Canvas(key='-CANVAS-')],
    [sg.Button('Plot')],
]
window = sg.Window('Line Graph', layout)

Step 4: Define a function to plot the line graph

Now that you have created your PySimpleGUI window, you can define a function that will create and display the line graph. This function will use Matplotlib to create the graph and then display it on the canvas element in your PySimpleGUI window. Here is an example function that you can use:

def plot_line_graph(x_values, y_values):
    plt.clf()
    plt.plot(x_values, y_values)
    plt.xlabel('X-axis')
    plt.ylabel('Y-axis')
    plt.title('Line Graph')
    plt.grid(True)
    plt.savefig('line_graph.png', dpi=100)

Step 5: Add an event loop to your PySimpleGUI window

Finally, you can add an event loop to your PySimpleGUI window that will call the plot_line_graph() function when the ‘Plot’ button is clicked. Here is an example event loop that you can use:

while True:
    event, values = window.read()
    if event == sg.WIN_CLOSED:
        break
    if event == 'Plot':
        x_values = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
        y_values = [2, 3, 5, 7, 11]
        plot_line_graph(x_values, y_values)

With these steps, you should now have a fully functional PySimpleGUI application that can display line graphs using Matplotlib. You can customize the x_values and y_values lists to display different data on your graph, and you can also customize the plot style and appearance by modifying the plot_line_graph() function. Experiment with different options and configurations to create the perfect line graph for your needs.