Make spider chart

What it does

This draws a spider/radar chart on a matplotlib plot/PolarAxes object.

Inputs

spider_plot

This is the plot on which the chart will be drawn. It needs to be a PolarAxes (matplotlib.projections.polar.PolarAxes).

series_label

This is a label for your series of data, in the form of a string.

data_labels

This a list of strings labelling each of your data points.

data_values

This is a list of floats that contains the values of each of your elements (how far from the center of the spider they are).

ticks

This is a list (of floats) of ticks along the spider (they should at least cover all your data values).

tick_labels

This is a list of labels corresponding to the ticks above. The list needs to be of the same length as the one above, with each element corresponding to the one in the above list.

spider_color

A string giveing the color name (see here for a list).

spider_marker

A string to set the markers for each data point. See here for options.

spider_linewidth

A float setting the with o the spider line

spider_alpha

A float (between 0 and 1) setting the opacity of the spider (0=fully transparent, 1=fully opaque)

Output

This returns a plot (PolarAxes) with the spider chart drawn on it. Use the same plot/PolarAxesas output as you used for input, so that you can superpose spiders.

Examples

Two spiders

    series_label = 'SFC'
    data_values = [0.6, 0, 0.26, 0.42, 0.89, 0.77]
    data_labels = ['Mango', 'Mapo', 'Lacrosse', 'Floorball', 'Switch', 'NDS']
    ticks = [0, 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, 1.0]
    tick_labels = ['0%', '25%', '50%', '75%', '100%']
    spider_color = 'fuchsia'
    spider_marker = 'o'
    spider_linewidth = 2

    spider_figure = plt.figure()
    spider_plot = spider_figure.add_subplot(111, polar=True)

    spider_alpha = 0.26
    spider_plot = make_spider_chart(
        spider_plot,
        series_label,
        data_labels,
        data_values,
        ticks,
        tick_labels,
        spider_color,
        spider_marker,
        spider_linewidth,
        spider_alpha,
    )

    spider_color = 'dodgerblue'
    series_label = 'GSHC'
    data_values = [0.52, 0.18, 0.29, 0.39, 0.66, 0.42]
    spider_plot = make_spider_chart(
        spider_plot,
        series_label,
        data_labels,
        data_values,
        ticks,
        tick_labels,
        spider_color,
        spider_marker,
        spider_linewidth,
        spider_alpha,
    )
    spider_figure.savefig('docs/spider_example.png')

Note that we use spider_plot as both input and output of make_spider_chart. We do this so that we can plot two spiders on top of each other (by calling the function twice).

Tests

Theta labels

This test looks if the function sets the theta labels (around the spider) to the data labels.

Typing issues

Axes versus PolarAxes

You might encounter an issue when running a MyPy (or other) type check. This comes from this line:

 spider_plot.set_thetagrids(angles * 180 / np.pi, data_labels)

This puts the data labels as the theta labels (around the spider) requires spider_plot to be a PolarAxes (matplotlib.projecions.polar.PolarAxes) element because set_thetagrids is an attribute of PolarAxes (and not Axes).

The problem is that the functions used to create a plot (an Axes element) claim to only create Axes, even if they create a PolarAxes, such as with the line below:

spider_plot = spider_figure.add_subplot(111, polar=True)

Matplotlib claims that add_subplot creates an Axes object, but the result is a PolarAxes. This means that a type check (such as MyPy) might throw an error. This might be solved if matplotlib updates its typing documentation by adding the possibility that add_subplot can also create a PolarAxes.

Open issues

Colors outside of matplotlib

Need to add support for colors other than matplotlib (via RGB)