How might create a legend for an area chart made with PolyCollection objects via the fill_between method? For example, on the following chart,
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ind = np.arange(3)
y1 = np.array([1,2,3])
y2 = y1 * 2
a = ax.fill_between(ind, y1, np.zeros(len(ind)), facecolor=‘r’, label=‘a’)
b = ax.fill_between(ind, y2, y1, facecolor=‘b’, label=‘b’)
plt.show()
I would like to create a legend that displays the label for a and b and the corresponding fill color. Unlike with non-collections objects, when I call ax.legend() I get an AttributeError and the following output,
AttributeError Traceback (most recent call last)
/home/chuck/ in ()
/home/chuck/matplotlib/trunk/matplotlib/lib/matplotlib/axes.pyc in legend(self, *args, **kwargs)
4004
4005 handles = cbook.flatten(handles)
-> 4006 self.legend_ = mlegend.Legend(self, handles, labels, **kwargs)
4007 return self.legend_
4008
/home/chuck/matplotlib/trunk/matplotlib/lib/matplotlib/legend.pyc in init(self, parent, handles, labels, loc, numpoints, markerscale, scatterpoints, scatteryoffsets, prop, pad, labelsep, handlelen, handletextsep, axespad, borderpad, labelspacing, handlelength, handletextpad, borderaxespad, columnspacing, ncol, mode, fancybox, shadow, title, bbox_to_anchor, bbox_transform)
307
308 # init with null renderer
–> 309 self._init_legend_box(handles, labels)
310
311 self.set_title(title)
/home/chuck/matplotlib/trunk/matplotlib/lib/matplotlib/legend.pyc in _init_legend_box(self, handles, labels)
584
585 handle = handle_list[-1]
–> 586 handlebox.add_artist(handle)
587 if hasattr(handle, “_legmarker”):
588 handlebox.add_artist(handle._legmarker)
/home/chuck/matplotlib/trunk/matplotlib/lib/matplotlib/offsetbox.pyc in add_artist(self, a)
489 ‘Add any :class:~matplotlib.artist.Artist to the container box’
490 self._children.append(a)
–> 491 a.set_transform(self.get_transform())
492
493
AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘set_transform’