Plotting a Calendar in Matplotlib

And here's a function to plot a compact calendar with matplotlib:

import calendar
import numpy as np
from matplotlib.patches import Rectangle
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

def plot_calendar(days, months):
 plt.figure(figsize=(9, 3))
 # non days are grayed
 ax = plt.gca().axes
 ax.add_patch(Rectangle((29, 2), width=.8, height=.8, 
 color='gray', alpha=.3))
 ax.add_patch(Rectangle((30, 2), width=.8, height=.8,
 color='gray', alpha=.5))
 ax.add_patch(Rectangle((31, 2), width=.8, height=.8,
 color='gray', alpha=.5))
 ax.add_patch(Rectangle((31, 4), width=.8, height=.8,
 color='gray', alpha=.5))
 ax.add_patch(Rectangle((31, 6), width=.8, height=.8,
 color='gray', alpha=.5))
 ax.add_patch(Rectangle((31, 9), width=.8, height=.8,
 color='gray', alpha=.5))
 ax.add_patch(Rectangle((31, 11), width=.8, height=.8,
 color='gray', alpha=.5))
 for d, m in zip(days, months):
 ax.add_patch(Rectangle((d, m), 
 width=.8, height=.8, color='C0'))
 plt.yticks(np.arange(1, 13)+.5, list(calendar.month_abbr)[1:])
 plt.xticks(np.arange(1,32)+.5, np.arange(1,32))
 plt.xlim(1, 32)
 plt.ylim(1, 13)
 plt.gca().invert_yaxis()
 # remove borders and ticks
 for spine in plt.gca().spines.values():
 spine.set_visible(False)
 plt.tick_params(top=False, bottom=False, left=False, right=False)
 plt.show()

You can use it to highlight the days with full moon in 2018:

full_moon_day = [2, 31, 2, 31, 30, 29, 28, 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22]
full_moon_month = [1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]
plot_calendar(full_moon_day, full_moon_month)

👁 Matplotlib

Or just highlight all the weekends:

from datetime import datetime, timedelta

def get_weekends(year):
 weekend_day = []
 weekend_month = [] 
 start = datetime(year, 1, 1)
 for i in range(365):
 day_of_the_year = start + timedelta(days=i)
 if day_of_the_year.weekday() > 4:
 weekend_day.append(day_of_the_year.day)
 weekend_month.append(day_of_the_year.month)
 return weekend_day, weekend_month

weekend_day, weekend_month = get_weekends(2018)
plot_calendar(weekend_day, weekend_month)

👁 Matplotlib