How to place legend next to each line in matplitlib

Question

Here is my plot, you can see that there is over 15 lines in a plot, although I put a legend in the top right corner, I still can not easily differentiate each line.

Is there a better way of doing this? for example, put legend next each line? I can not find a API. any help is appreciated.

You can

Answer 1

The comment is indeed what you need. This post is just to make a solution a bit more explicit.

Using annotate a label can be placed at a specific position. I.e. it can be placed based on the coordinates of the last point of the curve, e.g. (xlast, ylast). To make the plot more pretty, the horizontal position can increased by e.g. 2% to place the label at a small distance from the last point (i.e. the label is placed at (1.02*xlast, ylast)).

In a small example:

import numpy             as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig, ax = plt.subplots()


x     = np.linspace(0,1,2)
y     = 1*x
label = '1x'
color = 'b'

ax.plot(x, y, color=color)

ax.annotate(label,
  xy     = (     x[-1], y[-1]),
  xytext = (1.02*x[-1], y[-1]),
  color  = color,
)


x     = np.linspace(0,1,2)
y     = 2*x
label = '2x'
color = 'r'

ax.plot(x, y, color=color)

ax.annotate(label,
  xy     = (     x[-1], y[-1]),
  xytext = (1.02*x[-1], y[-1]),
  color  = color,
)


ax.set_xlim([0,1.2])

ax.set_xlabel('x')
ax.set_ylabel('y')

plt.savefig('so.png')
plt.show()

Which results in: