How to modify a time series plot

I have created a time series plot. My x axis shows the dates that correspond with each point as intended, however, it is only showing four dates. For this particular data file, there are 17 dates. Is there a way to change the way the date values show up?

Answer 1

[dpb]

See Datetimeruler-properties

You can set the tick locations and formatting as desired; you'll may have to rotate to get enough room for as much as you're wanting to show to be legible; dates/times take up a lot of real estate.

[Brandon Bush]

Thanks, that definitely helped. I would now like to put equal spacing between each tick mark, however, there is no function to specify the spacing on that page. How can I do it?

text = struct2cell(text)';
Dates = text(:,1);

GAUGE_ts = timeseries(RNFLG,Dates);
SAT_ts = timeseries(SAT_RNFL,Dates);

plot(GAUGE_ts)
hold on
plot(SAT_ts)

ax = gca;
ax.XAxis.TickValues = datetime(Dates);
ax.XAxis.TickLabelFormat = 'M/d';
ax.XAxis.TickLabelRotation = 45;
ax.XAxis.FontSize = 8.5;

[dpb]

Well, approximately log-distributed times on a datetime axes seems a little unusual...bet nobody at TMW ever thought of somebody having data that looked like that! :)

What you need to do is to set the XTick values to a set across the axes limits instead of using every observed value -- ticks and data points don't have to coincide.

Try something like (air code, don't have your data to play with but should work I believe)

xtk=xlim;        % retrieve default axes limits
Ntk=10;          % pick a number of ticks desired
ax.XTick=linspace(xtk(1),xtk(2),Ntk);

Salt to suit.

I not used the timeseries object enough to know and the doc was pretty obtuse; does it store the times as explicit field or is buried in the properties and in your creation as above are the values of

GAUGE_ts.Time

datetimes equiavelent to Dates? I'm presuming that's so in which case you could eliminate creating the other variable as a minor efficiency.

If you want the axes limits different, just do the same thing as above to set the axis limits; and then set the ticks to match.

It does seem as though a useful enhancement would be to be able to specify number of major ticks as well rather than requiring the tick values...