Fill area in plot with datetime

The following simplified example illustrates my problem:

Let

DateStrings = {'2014-01';'2014-02';'2014-03';'2014-04';'2014-05';'2014-06'};
X = datetime(DateStrings,'InputFormat','y-M');
Y = 1:6;

The following works, but is not exactly what I need:

plot(X,Y, 'DatetimeTickFormat','M-yyyy');

What I need is something like this:

area(X,Y, 'DatetimeTickFormat','M-yyyy');

This does not work, because "Input arguments must be numeric".

Does anybody know how to put dates on the x-axis with "area" or fill the area between 0 and Y with plot?

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Don't use X. Just create your cell array DateStrings the way you want it and then do this:

area(1:length(DateStrings),Y);
ax = gca;
ax.XTickLabel = DateStrings;
ax.XTickLabelRotation = -75;

[Frank]

Thank you very much for your answer. When I follow your code, I see the following X-Y-combinations. (2014-01, 1), (2014-02, 1.5), (2014-03, 2), (2014-04, 2.5), (2014-05, 3), (2014-06, 3.5), (2014-01, 4), ..., (2014-05, 6). This is not correct.

[Image Analyst]

What's not correct about it? Like I said "Just create your cell array DateStrings the way you want it" <=== Did you do that? Or not?

[Frank]

Of course, I did that ....... not ;-). Thanks for your answers!

Answer 2

[Peter Perkins]

Frank, if you have access to the most recent release, R2016b, area does now work with datetimes:

area(X,Y);
h = gca; h.XAxis.TickLabelFormat = 'M-yyyy'

The default labels are month name, with year as the "secondary label", so you'd need to set XAxis.TickLabelFormat to get exactly the labels you want. Notice that using XAxis.TickLabelFormat is a bit different than in previous releases. That new property is supported for all datetime plots, and most (maybe even all, I forget) plotting now works with datetimes and durations. DatetimeTickFormat is still supported in the plot function, but moving forward you should use XAxis.TickLabelFormat.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

[Einar]

An alternative solution:

 area(datenum(X),Y)
 datetick('x', 'mm-yyyy')

Answer 4

[Frank]

So simple! Works perfect! Thank you very much.